Santayanajkt
3/22/04
2:02 PM
Page 1
Santayana
THE WORKS OF GEORGE SANTAYANA CRITICAL EDITION
The MIT Press Massach...
67 downloads
1054 Views
2MB Size
Report
This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form
Santayanajkt
3/22/04
2:02 PM
Page 1
Santayana
THE WORKS OF GEORGE SANTAYANA CRITICAL EDITION
The MIT Press Massachusetts Institute of Technology Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142 http://mitpress.mit.edu 0-262-19490-2
THE LETTERS OF GEORGE SANTAYANA
Book One, [1868]–1909 Book Two, 1910–1920 Book Three, 1921–1927 Book Four, 1928–1932 Book Five, 1933–1936 Book Six, 1937–1940 Book Seven, 1941–1947 Book Eight, 1948–1952
Book Five, 1933–1936
The letters comprise Volume V of the Works of George Santayana. They are divided chronologically as follows:
Volume V
George Santayana was a philosopher, poet, critic of culture and literature, and bestselling novelist. Although he was born in Spain and lived the last forty years of his life in Europe, Santayana always insisted that he be considered an American author and philosopher. He was educated in the United States, and he taught for more than twenty years at Harvard University. Santayana’s correspondence was extensive, particularly during his remarkably productive European years. Until now, not even onequarter of his letters have been published. Daniel Cory, Santayana’s friend and first literary executor, thought he had collected the great majority of them when he published his two biographical letters’ volumes (1955 and 1963), but many more manuscript letters have been found since then. Taken together, the letters complement Santayana’s autobiographical writings (Persons and Places and The Last Puritan) and clarify many issues in his personal, public, and philosophical life.
Critical Edition
Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., General Editor William G. Holzberger, Textual Editor
THE LETTERS OF GEORGE SANTAYANA
THE LETTERS OF
GEORGE SANTAYANA BOOK FIVE 1933–1936 Edited and with an Introduction by William G. Holzberger
BOOK FIVE 1933–1936 Edited and with an Introduction by William G. Holzberger
During the period covered by this book, George Santayana had settled permanently in Rome. His best-selling novel, The Last Puritan, was published in London in 1935 and in the United States in 1936, where it was chosen as a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. In 1936 Santayana became one of the few philosophers ever to appear on the front cover of Time magazine. His growing influence was evidenced further by two other 1936 publications, Obiter Scripta: Lectures, Essays, and Reviews and Philosophy of Santayana: Selections from the Works of George Santayana. Also during this year the first six volumes of the fifteen-volume Triton Edition (a limited, signed collector’s edition of Santayana’s work, which included significant new prefaces for each volume) were published by Scribner’s. Santayana continued work on The Realm of Truth and The Realm of Spirit, as well as his autobiography, Persons and Places. The book includes letters to Wendell T. Bush, Henry Seidel Canby, Curt John Ducasse, Max Forrester Eastman, Sidney Hook, Horace Meyer Kallen, Corliss Lamont, Ralph Barton Perry, William Lyon Phelps, and John Herman Randall. A number of the letters comment on his contemporaries, such as John Dewey, T. S. Eliot, G. E. Moore, Ezra Pound, and Bertrand Russell. William G. Holzberger is Professor of English Emeritus at Bucknell University.
THE WORKS OF GEORGE SANTAYANA, Volume V
,!7IA2G2-bjejah!:t;K;k;K;k
Edited by William G. Holzberger and Herman J. Saatkamp Jr.
The Works of George Santayana Volume V, Book Five Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., General Editor William G. Holzberger, Textual Editor Marianne S. Wokeck, Editor Kristine W. Frost, Associate Editor Johanna E. Resler, Assistant Editor
To the memory of Daniel and Margot Cory
“In regard to a fancy title for the limited edition of my works, would Triton Edition be at all the sort of thing required? ...What suggested the word to me is that my windows in Rome look down on the Fontana del Tritone and Via del Tritone. The Triton, by Bernini, is well known, and might be reproduced for a frontispiece or paper-cover.” —from Santayana’s letter to John Hall Wheelock of 23 June 1936 Original photograph, courtesy of Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., has been enhanced with his permission.
The Letters of George Santayana Book Five, 1933—1936
Edited and with an Introduction by William G. Holzberger
The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England
This publication has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal agency which supports the study of such fields as history, philosophy, literature, and languages. A grant provided in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Kendall Berry of Blytheville, Arkansas, has provided significant support for the publication of the letters; in conjunction, additional funding comes from John and Shirley Lachs. The endpapers are facsimiles of a letter from Santayana to Max Forrester Eastman dated 28 November 1936. Publication is courtesy of the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington.
A selected edition of The Letters of George Santayana was published by Scribner’s in 1955. Other letters written by Santayana have been published previously in books and periodicals. All information concerning previous publications is included in the textual notes. © 2003 Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Introduction,” William G. Holzberger. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopy, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition. Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Santayana, George, 1863–1952. [Correspondence] The letters of George Santayana / G. Santayana; edited and with an introduction by William G. Holzberger,—Santayana ed. p. cm.—(The works of George Santayana; v.5) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-262-19479-1 (bk.4:hc:alk.paper) 1. Santayana, George, 1863–1952—Correspondence. 2. Philosophers—United States— Correspondence. I. Holzberger, William G. II. Title. B945.S2 1986 vol. 5 [B945.S24 A4] 191—dc21
00—048978
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standards for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48 1984. ∞ ™
{
The Santayana Edition Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., General Editor William G. Holzberger, Textual Editor Marianne S. Wokeck, Editor Kristine W. Frost, Associate Editor Johanna E. Resler, Assistant Editor Editorial Board Willard Arnett Hugh J. Dawson Morris Grossman Angus Kerr-Lawson John Lachs Richard C. Lyon
Douglas M. MacDonald John M. Michelsen Andrew J. Reck Beth J. Singer T. L. S. Sprigge Henny Wenkart Consultants Jo Ann Boydston Irving Singer Robert S. Sturgis
The Works of George Santayana I Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography, 1986 II The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Æsthetic Theory, 1988 III Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, 1990 IV The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel, 1994 V The Letters of George Santayana, Book One, 2001 The Letters of George Santayana, Book Two, 2002 The Letters of George Santayana, Book Three, 2002 The Letters of George Santayana, Book Four, 2003 The Letters of George Santayana, Book Five, 2003
Contents Book Five, 1933–1936 Preface Acknowledgments Introduction by William G. Holzberger List of Letters
xi xxvii xli lxvii
LETTERS
3
EDITORIAL APPENDIX Textual Commentary Short-Title List Textual Notes Report of Line-End Hyphenation Chronology Addresses Manuscript Locations List of Recipients List of Unlocated Letters
427 443 447 515 517 535 549 553 557
INDEX
561
Preface Book Five, 1933—1936 At the opening of this period of Santayana’s letters, the world was in the throes of the Great Depression that had begun about three years earlier in the autumn of 1929; and the early months of 1933 are witness to various woes and miseries among Santayana and his friends. In mid-January Santayana learns from Strong that his old Harvard philosophical colleague Dickinson Miller has, because of the financial crisis, lost the lectureship he had in London and is now destitute and appealing to Strong for assistance. Upon learning this, Santayana sends Miller some money. Shortly afterward, when Miller turns up in Rome seeking employment, Santayana puts him to work setting the manuscript of Dominations and Powers in order with an eye to mining it for publishable articles. This employment soon comes to an end though when Miller, who was evidently hypersensitive and eccentric (Strong thought he was paranoid), took offense at something Santayana said or did and quit in a huff, saying that he did not wish any longer to associate with someone like Santayana. He did, however, condescend to borrow from Santayana the price of his steamship ticket back to the United States. Though sorry for Miller, Santayana was rather relieved by his departure, feeling that he could not well afford to support both Cory and Miller. At this same time ( January 1933) Cory, who was then living in London, was laid up with influenza. Santayana’s old friend Boylston Beal, visiting Rome with his manservant, was also ill with influenza and confined for a lengthy period to his bed in the Palace Hotel. In March, Santayana himself is ill with an attack of his “bronchial catarrh.” While nursing this latest outbreak of his chronic bronchitis, he receives word from Spain that Teresa Fernández de Soto (wife of Luis Sastre, stepson of Santayana’s late sister Susana) has died in Ávila, leaving her husband and five small children. In May Santayana writes a remarkable letter to the Marquesa Iris Origo (née Iris Cutting, daughter of his Harvard friend Bayard Cutting and his wife Lady Sybil Cuffe) on the death of her seven-year-old son, Gianni, from tubercular meningitis. Santayana will later write a foreword for Origo’s
xii Preface
biography of the Italian poet, Leopardi (Oxford University Press, 1935), and she will quote from Santayana’s condolence letter in her autobiography, Images and Shadows: Part of a Life (1970). George Sturgis’s semiannual report of Santayana’s financial holdings, received late in January, is reassuring to Santayana because it shows that he continues—despite fluctuations in the securities markets—to live on only half his income. He notices that Sturgis has, like many investors at the time, transferred largish sums into United States government bonds; he is satisfied that his nephew is doing a good job managing his money in a perilous economy. He is less content with the way Daniel Cory has been managing his own personal finances. When Cory complains that he runs out of money when Strong forgets to send him his monthly check on time, Santayana expresses impatience with the then twenty-eight-year-old Cory for not better budgeting his money (Cory, 6 March 1933). This is something that Cory seems never to have learned to do, because Santayana continues throughout their correspondence to upbraid him from time to time for lack of financial foresight and discipline. Later in the letters of this period, he says that he would be willing to transfer a little capital to Cory which he could invest and on which he could draw income. He fears, however, that Cory would only spend the capital and thus be no better off (Cory, 26 March 1936). Early in 1933 Santayana is particularly concerned with completion of his novel, The Last Puritan. By mid-March he is engaged in a final revision of the manuscript and having Miss Evelyn Tindall make a typewritten copy of the finished work. At this point, however, he had no intention of publishing the novel during his lifetime. His plan was to wait until all living persons who might recognize themselves in the characters and situations of the novel were, along with the author himself, safely dead (Scribner’s, 19 March 1933). He observes that the work, over the more than forty years that he has been writing it, has departed radically from his original conception. It has become, he finds, not as “clever and amusing” as he had intended when originally he was thinking of composing a story about college life, but that it had become “deeper and more consistent” than he had suspected. He finds that it has “a hidden tragic structure in it which was hardly foreseen […]” (Cory, 10 April 1933). At this time he is also corresponding with Logan Pearsall Smith about Shakespeare—they agree that Shakespeare’s philosophy is that “life is a dream” (Pearsall Smith, 12 April 1933)—and with Sidney Hook about Marx. Industrialism, says Santayana, is the real villain; capitalism is merely an accompanying
Preface xiii
“technical device.” Furthermore he disagrees with Marx on the fundamental concept of the location of value. For Marx the value of a thing resides in the labor required to produce it; for Santayana a thing’s value depends upon its use, and not at all upon the labor requisite to its production (Hook, 15 April 1933). Industrialism, says Santayana, is responsible for the proliferation of useless junk in modern society. The first mention of a reduction in Santayana’s income during these Depression years occurs in his letter to Cory of 26 April 1933. The cause is the deterioration in the exchange rate where the American dollar has become weakened and sharply reduced in value vis-à-vis the Italian lira. He writes that “now the exchange has reduced my income by 15%.” Even so, he does not expect to be much inconvenienced by the reduction. Toward the end of May 1933, Santayana begins corresponding with his first biographer, George W. Howgate, then a graduate student in English at the University of Pennsylvania, who, for his doctoral dissertation, was writing a critical biography of Santayana. Santayana assists Howgate in compiling a thoroughgoing bibliography of Santayana’s writings. Early in June, Cory is busy reading the typescript of the completed first half of The Last Puritan that Santayana had sent him. Cory’s assignment was to read the typescript of the novel critically and to suggest changes and improvements, especially whereby the language of the work might be brought more up to date. What Cory called “whiskered” words and phrases, like Santayana’s “aquatic exercise” for “swimming,” could be revised to reflect a more contemporary idiom. Aside from such desirable revisions, however, Santayana realized that the language of the novel must be his own, that the characters were essentially emanations of his own conscious and subconscious being, and that they must, more or less, speak his language, must speak like him. Absolute realism in the speech of his characters was not something he strove for in his novel, though perhaps he succeeded better than he realized—or is generally given credit for—in individualizing their speech and associating it with that of real persons. Though the characters were drawn from the depths of the author himself, Santayana points out that the novel “gives the emotions of my experiences, and not my thoughts or experiences themselves” (Phelps, 10 July 1933). Thus, The Last Puritan may be regarded as autobiographical, but only in a very indirect way. Santayana identifies partially with each of his characters, but not wholly or exclusively with any one of them. (It is interesting to observe that he concludes his letter to Phelps with “and God bless you!” as a few months later, in his letter to Charles P. Davis of 17 August, he writes: “But, God willing,
xiv Preface
I still mean to finish the Realms of Being also.” His atheistic materialism did not prevent him from using traditional religious phrases when writing to these two religious men, the Protestant Phelps and the Catholic Davis, or indeed to other individuals.) Santayana’s letter to George Sturgis of 11 July 1933 contains the first mention of the marital difficulties of George and Rosamond that will eventually result in the dissolution of their marriage. At this time we learn that the couple was planning a divorce. However, they actually remained together for another decade, and their divorce did not occur until 1944. In this same letter we also observe Santayana’s antipathy to the economic policies of the new United States president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had been elected the preceding year to the first of his three terms. However, Santayana learns from George Sturgis’s semiannual report that his income for the first half of 1933 has been eight thousand dollars, and is reassured to know that even if the dollar, devalued by Roosevelt, should continue to drop, even to fifty cents in value, that he would still be able to live in his customary style and continue to support Cory in the current amount of two hundred dollars per month. That Santayana’s income continued sufficient to enable him to support Cory was convenient for Cory because Charles Strong, whose income had been twenty-five thousand dollars per year, was now reduced to five thousand. When Strong’s wife, Elizabeth Rockefeller, died in 1906, she left Strong over half a million dollars. But the financial crisis had, as Santayana frequently writes in his letters of this period describing Strong’s predicament, about “ruined” him. He could just manage to keep his villa at Fiesole and his automobile, but he was obliged to let go his housemaid and his cook, retaining only his manservant Dino Rigacci (with Dino’s sister helping out occasionally), and to look for other ways to economize. Margaret and George Cuevas were to come live with Strong during the winter of 1933–34 and pay all the household expenses, but they too were feeling pinched. According to Santayana, they had an income of one hundred thousand dollars a year, yet were always deeply in debt (George Sturgis, 8 November 1933). Cory was a casualty of Strong’s need to economize: he decided to employ Cory no longer as a literary assistant or secretary and to send him no more money. This abandonment by Strong might possibly have worked in Cory’s favor if Santayana too had no longer been able to support him. He would then have been forced to shift for himself, to find employment and make an independent living. But this was not to be, for Santayana was able and
Preface xv
willing to continue to support Cory and did so. Now in his seventieth year, it appears that Santayana would have enjoyed the benefits of companionship and also the comfort and security that would come from living with or near someone whom he could count on in a health emergency. In the letter to Cory of 2 October 1933, and in subsequent letters, Santayana assures Cory that he will continue to send him an allowance as long as possible, recognizing, however, the uncertainty of the future. And he also says that—again, finances permitting—Cory would be welcome to live with or near him; that, indeed, he, Santayana, would very much like that arrangement: “to keep me company in my old age.” In the letter of 13 November 1933, he suggests that Cory consider coming to live with him in an apartment on the Riviera, where, he believed, the climate would permit him to remain year round. Cesare Pinchetti, his landlord at the Hotel Bristol in Rome and a leading fascist, had reduced Santayana’s room rent by twentyfive percent, and Mussolini had by decree reduced all Italian rents by an additional ten percent, but Santayana was currently losing thirty-five percent on the dollar in the exchange for the Italian lira. This was an additional inducement to consider removing to Nice, Monaco, or Rapallo, where he believed he could live much more cheaply than in Rome. Cory’s reply to this invitation was, however, noncommittal. He was at the time living in Bournemouth, Cornwall, and had fallen in love with Margot Degen Batten, an English divorcée with whom he would live for some seven years before marrying her in 1940. In mid-January 1934 Santayana is again reassured about his financial condition by the report he receives from George Sturgis. He calculates that he needs about ten thousand dollars to cover all of his usual expenses for the coming year, including charities, books, assistance to persons in Spain, and Cory’s allowance. At this time, the British pound was worth less than five dollars, and one thousand Italian lire had become worth almost one hundred dollars. It was a shock to Santayana when his weekly hotel bill at the Bristol came to somewhat more than one hundred dollars a week. Nevertheless, when he learns that his income for 1933 was fifteen thousand dollars, he concludes that he can continue his present way of life. He writes Cory that as long as things remain as they are and the dollar does not fall below fifty cents in value, he can continue to provide him with about two thousand dollars’ income per year. Cory now begins hinting to Santayana that he might like to get married. Apparently he is frightened away from the idea by Santayana’s observation that should Cory marry and be led into some other way of life than
xvi Preface
the literary, intellectual, and philosophical one, he might pass out of Santayana’s and Strong’s sphere entirely. He could then hardly presume to continue to be considered by them a recipient of their financial beneficence. Similarly, when Cory writes that he is considering becoming a British subject, Santayana warns him that this might cause Strong to delete the provision (recipient of a philosophical fellowship) for Cory in his will. But in his letter to Cory of 26 January 1934, Santayana generously sets aside his own desire for companionship and recommends that Cory continue living in England, where he seems to be happy. Later, in the spring of 1934, however, Santayana and Cory correspond about the possibility of renting the Countess de Bellisson’s flat at San Michele, near Rapallo, on the Italian Riviera, beginning in the autumn. Cory had heard that the flat would then be available, and he and Santayana consider the idea of living in it together during certain months of the year, and then each living in it separately while the other is traveling or staying elsewhere. For the summer of 1934, Santayana accepts an offer from Strong to come live with him at Fiesole as a “paying guest,” the idea being regarded as a cost-cutting measure for both of them. As the summer approached, however, Santayana began worrying about whether he would be able to spend the summer successfully under Strong’s roof. But by late June 1934 the two elderly philosophers were living at the Villa le Balze, and Santayana wrote Cory that things were going pretty well. Two weeks later, however, Santayana left Fiesole for Cortina d’Ampezzo. Strong himself, it appears, was not the principal reason for his departure, although Santayana does complain of “a certain monotony and dryness in our personal relations” (George Sturgis, 9 July 1934). Rather it was the “mosquitoes, flies, and dining everyday on the same middling food in the Piazza della Signoria” in Florence that drove Santayana away (Cory, 8 July 1934). George Sturgis’s semiannual financial report, arriving early in July, convinced Santayana that the economy of living with Strong was not really necessary. Santayana arrived in Cortina on about July 18th. Later that month, Cory writes Santayana that he has no intention of getting married until things are more settled (presumably referring to the world economic situation), but he also backs away from the idea of sharing with him the Countess de Bellisson’s apartment on the Riviera. Cory was presumably living with Margot Batten at this time and realized that he could not very well live part of each year with Santayana in Italy and also maintain his relationship with Margot in England.
Preface xvii
During these months of 1934 Santayana had been, as always, busy with a variety of literary and philosophical endeavors. A young Frenchman, Jacques Duron, formerly a teacher in a lycée, was studying Santayana’s writings in preparation for composing a doctoral thesis on them. Additionally, two young American scholars, Justus Buchler and Benjamin Schwartz, were assembling materials for an edition of Santayana’s incidental essays that would be published under their Latin equivalent, Obiter Scripta, in 1936. Santayana tried to be of assistance to these young scholars in their work of assembling a bibliography of his writings, but he also found time for such favorite entertainments as the opera. In March he enjoyed a performance by Toti dal Monte in the title role of Lucia di Lammermoor at the Rome Opera, although he was critical of the celebrated soprano’s vocal technique. Also during March he was visited in Rome by John Herman Randall and his wife, and in April he had tea at the Excelsior with Iris and Antonio Origo. The brief employment of Dickinson Miller on the manuscript of Dominations and Powers early in 1934 had resuscitated Santayana’s interest in that book, to which he now returned with the intention of making a popular work of it. Evelyn Tindall, in addition to typing chapters of The Last Puritan, was now, in the summer of 1934, also occupied with transcribing the autograph manuscript of Dominations and Powers. That manuscript had been in development for almost as many years as the novel, and some of the pages were heavily reworked and difficult to read. Santayana apologized to his typist for the condition of the manuscript and paid her more than she asked for the job. In addition to his efforts to bring cohesion and coherence to the manuscript of Dominations and Powers, Santayana had also been working to complete composition of The Last Puritan, which he believed he could do by the end of that summer of 1934. Then, too, he continued to write letters on several subjects to a number of persons. As usual, he exchanges letters on philosophical topics with Strong, Cory, and Mr. and Mrs. Wendell T. Bush, but also with Sterling Lamprecht, Curt Ducasse, Harry Austryn Wolfson (his former pupil), and others. He writes to Corliss Lamont about religion, to Logan Pearsall Smith about literature, and to Max Eastman about aesthetics, art, and bullfighting. To Victor Calverton he writes about American Puritanism. In a letter about politics to Sidney Hook (of 8 June 1934) he gives an interesting assessment of Nazism: “it is Nietzschean, founded on will; and therefore a sort of romanticism gone mad, rather
xviii Preface
than a serious organization of material forces.” Were it not like this, he says, he could “sympathize with the Nazi’s.” On 31 August 1934, at Cortina d’Ampezzo, Santayana completed composition of The Last Puritan; however, there was still considerable work to do on the manuscript—revising and refining, cutting and adding—before the work would be truly finished. He also wants Cory to give the complete manuscript a reading and make recommendations for any final revisions that he might think advisable. Santayana left Cortina and traveled to Venice by motorbus on 11 September 1934. By mid-December he was still tinkering with the text of the novel and he was still uncertain about the propriety or desirability of publishing the book during his lifetime. But early in October he sent off the seven-page foreword that he had written for Iris Origo’s book on Leopardi and then remained in Venice until October 17, at which time he returned to Rome and to his suite at the Bristol. Santayana was enjoying reading Martin Heidegger’s book Being and Time (1927). He had come across the writings of the German phenomenologist a year earlier when he read an essay by Heidegger on “nothing,” which Santayana found wonderful (Cory, 13 October 1933). In January 1935 Santayana received George Sturgis’s yearly account with satisfaction: there was an increase both in income and in the value of the capital. This meant that he could continue his customary way of life, for which he required six thousand dollars for his living expenses and two thousand dollars to replenish his London checking account. The checking account balance, supplemented by any royalties on his books and fees for periodical articles, was used to order books, contribute to charities, make money gifts to individuals, and pay Cory’s allowance. Daniel Cory came to Rome in mid-February with the intention of remaining there until after Easter (mid-April) and then returning to England. The principal purpose of his visit, in addition to seeing Santayana again, was to go over with him the complete text of The Last Puritan. In his letter to Cory of 10 February 1935, Santayana outlines, for Cory’s convenience in planning his own routine while in Rome, his current daily schedule. After breakfast in his room, Santayana would spend the morning in pyjamas and robe working on his books and articles. At noon he would stop working, shave, and have his bath. By one o’clock he would be dressed and ready to go out to a restaurant for his midday meal, after which he would take a long walk through Rome, stopping—weather permitting—to sit on a park bench and read. By five o’clock he would be back in his rooms in the Bristol. Often he would have a light supper sent up and spend the evening writing letters and read-
Preface xix
ing until 10:30, when he would go to bed. Undoubtedly he would accommodate this routine to the purpose of working with Cory on the review and revision of the novel, and he would regularly invite Cory to join him for the midday meal. Additionally, Cory could have, if he wished, the use of Santayana’s suite during the whole afternoon while Santayana was away. By 6 April 1935 Santayana and Cory had completed their review of the novel, final revisions had been made, and the typescript was sent to Constable Publishers in London on that day. By May 8 Cory had returned to England. The first mention in Santayana’s letters of the possibility of war breaking out in Europe occurs in his letter to George Sturgis of 29 March 1935, in which he expresses concern about where he might safely spend the summer. Also in that letter we read with some wonder the expression of Santayana’s trust in Mussolini to make a fair settlement of current international disputes. About this time, early in the spring of 1935, Santayana receives invitations to return to Harvard. The University, founded in 1636, would in the following year celebrate its three-hundredth anniversary. President James Bryant Conant and the Tercentenary Committee write inviting Santayana to come to Harvard to participate in the celebratory activities and to receive an honorary degree; he politely declines. He also rejects an invitation from Boylston Beal to come to Harvard during the centennial celebration for the fiftieth reunion of their Harvard Class of 1886. There he could be reunited with such close friends of his youth as Gordon Bell, Bob Barlow, “Jack” ( J. Pierpont) Morgan, and Ward Thoron, fellow members of the Delta Phi or Gashouse (later called the Delphic Club), and of the Drunk’s Exercise Club. He would, he says (in his letter to Beal of 20 April 1935), travel to the ends of the earth to attend such a reunion if it were only possible for all of them to be as they were in their salad days. But the prospect of finding those friends of his youth transformed into conventional elderly Americans was something he did not care to face. Moreover, he was appalled by what he anticipated to be the artificial jollity of such a reunion. Toward the end of May, Santayana left Rome for Venice, stopping there on the way to Cortina d’Ampezzo, where he spends the summer of 1935. He takes with him the manuscripts of Dominations and Powers and the Realm of Truth, but in fact, while at Cortina, he concentrates on the Realm of Spirit. Cory is in England at this time working on two books: a philosophical treatise that he intended to entitle an “ABC of Epistemology” and a novel (no
xx Preface
doubt inspired by his work with Santayana on The Last Puritan) to be called “Michael.” Neither of these projects was ever completed. Santayana, at this time, in addition to his summer writing program, was also enjoying a diverse menu of reading material, including Aldous Huxley’s novel Point Counter Point (1928), philosopher Alain’s Les Dieux, the Bhagavad-Gita (the ancient Hindu religious text), and the writings of St. John of the Cross. In the late summer and early fall of 1935, Santayana and Strong were both thinking about the perennial question of Cory’s financial position and future, and correspondence on the issue passed between them. On July 13 Santayana wrote Strong that he did not regard the monthly allowance that he gave Cory as a salary for work, “but as a sort of pension or scholarship, to keep him going. Frankly I hardly think he has done much to deserve it; but we have got him into the habit of depending on us, and for the years I am likely to live, I am willing to go on supporting him, so long as I can afford it.” Also in this letter, Santayana says that Cory might well go to Florence in the coming winter and confer with Strong on Strong’s writing projects, but he exhorts Strong to be considerate of Cory, who is “still delicate, though his digestion is better.” In order to give Cory some idea of his future financial prospects, Santayana tries, in his letter to Strong of 17 September 1935, to discover if Strong still plans to make some provision for Cory in his will. This would be significant, Santayana writes, because he himself will leave Cory only his books, manuscripts, and perhaps a little money (he was thinking of two thousand dollars) “to tide him over that crisis.” Santayana is relieved to learn that Strong still intends to name Cory as the first recipient of the philosophical fellowship that he plans to establish. During the summer of 1935, Constable Publishers had been making preparations for publication of The Last Puritan; now, in the autumn, Santayana is reading proofs for the book. But Constable’s director, Otto Kyllmann, continued to be concerned about the possibility of libel suits deriving from publication of the novel. He was worried that individuals, businesses, or institutions might identify themselves with entities in the book, take offense, and sue. Santayana was nearly reconciled to withdrawing the work and keeping it for posthumous publication when Kyllmann finally concluded that such offense and consequent legal actions were unlikely. The Constable edition of The Last Puritan was published in London on 17 October 1935. Scribner’s was unwilling simply to buy sheets from Constable (as they had for some of Santayana’s other books) and release the English edition in the United States. Rather, the American pub-
Preface xxi
lisher set up the text of the novel independently; and, because of revisions Santayana made for the Constable edition, the texts of the two editions of the novel differ substantively in a number of places. The Scribner’s edition was published in New York on 1 February 1936. The success of The Last Puritan was greater than Santayana could have imagined. It enjoyed a respectable sale in England and Canada, but in the United States it was taken up by the Book-of-the-Month Club and became a bestseller. By late April 1936 more than 135,000 copies had been sold in the United States. In February 1936 Santayana received a check for five thousand dollars (half of the publication-rights fee paid by the BOMC to Scribner’s) and the promise of another for thirty thousand dollars in royalties to be paid the following December. By 1 August 1936 Scribner’s sales of the novel had reached almost 149,000 copies. At this stage of his career, Santayana appeared to be little interested in critical response to his writing, but he was disappointed in the reviews of his novel that he did read. He felt that either the critics did not fully understand the work or that they were “shy” about discussing more deeply the relationships between the characters. But insofar as the critics were aware of what Santayana refers to as the “erotic friendships” in the novel, he believed that they would be concerned to know to what extent they reflected the author’s own history. “The fact is,” he wrote, “that there is very little to know, except what can be got by psychoanalysis out of my prose and poetry” (Cory, 26 September 1935). The responses of his friends to the novel were more interesting to him than those of the professional critics; yet even these, on the whole, he found disappointing. He was not surprised when his old friend Boylston Beal, whom he later describes in his autobiography as a “pure and intense Bostonian,” recognized the reallife models for several of the New England characters. Similarly, he was decidedly pleased and amused when the novelist “Elizabeth” observed essential personal traits of her former husband, the second Earl Russell, in the character of James Darnley (“Lord Jim”). Before marrying Russell, Elizabeth had been the widow of Count Henning von Arnim and had lived many years in Germany. Thus, when she also vouched for the verisimilitude of the character Irma Schlote, the protagonist’s German governess who reminded her of her closest woman friend, Santayana felt reassured that in Irma he had created a living fictional personality. All in all, Santayana was surprised and pleased by his novel’s popularity and gratified by its financial success. That success replenished his coffers and reassured him that he could afford to continue his customary way of life, to
xxii Preface
continue to support Cory, and to provide financial assistance to relations and friends in Spain and elsewhere. During the summer of 1936 Santayana realized that people in Europe were increasingly living under a war cloud. But at this time he was completely out of sympathy with the liberal governments of England and the United States. He had given up his subscription to an English daily newspaper and now read only the Italian press, in which the news was effectively filtered through the prism of Mussolini’s totalitarian regime. He admired Mussolini and detested Anthony Eden, the former military officer, currently a conservative British statesman, who in 1935 became minister without portfolio for League of Nations affairs and secretary of state for foreign affairs. He compared Eden, whom he referred to as “an odious tyrant,” running the League of Nations, to President Charles William Eliot running the Harvard faculty (Strong, 23 October 1935). This was, for Santayana, a very damning comparison. However, despite his sympathy for Italy and admiration for Mussolini, his contempt for Anthony Eden, his anti-English sentiments, and his loathing for the League, he was sufficiently astute to recognize as unfortunate the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (Cory, 26 October 1935). That invasion served to bring the Nazis of Germany and the fascists of Italy into close accord, and he hoped that there would not be another general war. Yet another threat to Santayana’s well-being came to his attention when he learned that the League of Nations (“these mad people at Geneva”) was proposing sanctions against Italy that would threaten prohibition of all payments to people resident in that country (George Sturgis, 14 October 1935). For Santayana, now twenty-three years out of America, this is the first hint of what would actually happen to him during the Second World War when, in his eighties and living in Rome, he would be completely cut off from his source of funds in the United States. Santayana was also disturbed, in January and February of 1936, to observe in the Italian newspapers and in communications from the Sastres and others in Spain that things were heating up and moving toward the terrible civil war that would break out there the following July. On a personal level, yet another disturbing event that had occurred to Santayana early in December 1935 was the attack of dizziness and weakness that lead him to conclude that he had a weak heart. He describes the condition in his letter to Cory of 6 December 1936, where we find the first mention of Dr. Luigi Sabbatucci, whom Santayana had consulted about the incident and who would remain his physician for the rest of his life. Confined for some time
Preface xxiii
to his rooms and thinking that this attack might signal the possibility of imminent, serious, and permanent illness, Santayana thinks about asking Cory, in such circumstances, to come and look after him. He reflects that at his age—almost seventy-two—“the possibility of illness and death is never far removed” (Cory, 6 December 1935). This event also prompts him to write to George Sturgis saying that, apart from the trust that covers the bulk of his financial property, he wishes to leave two thousand dollars each to Cory and to Mercedes Escalera (Sturgis, 10 December 1935). For a time he has all of his meals in his sitting room, not dining in restaurants; and he begins taking camphor drops for his heart. Then, not suffering pain as such, he resumes his daily walk, though he continues for a time to experience occasional dizziness. Early in February 1936 he writes to Rosamond, wife of his nephew and financial manager George Sturgis, continuing a correspondence between them that ultimately consists of seventy letters, dating from 26 March 1926 to 22 July 1952. These letters to Rosamond from “Uncle George” reveal the development of a warm and confidential relationship between the appreciative elderly philosopher and his sincerely affectionate and solicitous niece. In addition to correspondence from old friends whom he saw—or at least corresponded with—periodically, such as Boylston Beal or “Elizabeth,” the publication of The Last Puritan brought Santayana letters from several persons whom he had not seen or heard from for many years. He was very pleased to receive several letters from Robert Shaw (“Bob”) Barlow and said that it was “as if our old acquaintance were renewed after forty years, without any loss of sympathy” (Barlow, 29 March 1936). Barlow, whom Santayana first met at Harvard in the autumn of 1889 when Barlow was an undergraduate and Santayana a beginning instructor in philosophy, was cousin to Santayana’s Sturgis relations. The young persons of The Last Puritan, Santayana points out, are of Bob Barlow’s generation and not of his own somewhat earlier one (Barlow, 19 October 1935). And Santayana responds with a long nostalgic letter (of 1 April 1936) to a letter from “Cousin Rita” (Mrs. Henrietta Sturgis Ingersoll) whose father, Robert, had been a brother of Santayana’s mother’s first husband, George Sturgis of Boston. This was a pleasant relationship that went back to Santayana’s childhood, and in his letter to “Rita” he reminisces about family events of those early days. The financial windfall resulting from the remarkable success of The Last Puritan prompted Santayana to treat himself, with part of the money, to a luxurious suite in Paris, where he planned to spend the summer of 1936
xxiv Preface
(and perhaps future summers). Strong and Cory would also be in Paris then, and it promised to be a pleasant time. War now seemed unlikely to Santayana, and Paris, he thought, should be safe. His attitude reflected the mentality of many Europeans twenty-two years earlier when, shortly before the outbreak of the First World War, they believed that the statesmen of the various nations would bluster and fulminate but would surely pull back from the brink of war. Santayana arrived in Paris on 4 June 1936 and settled into a suite at the Savoy Hotel. From the windows he had a splendid view of the Tuileries Gardens, but the hotel itself was disappointing: he found it faded and dingy and “rather horrid” (Cory, 9 June 1936). His routine in Paris was as usual, except that he lunched every day with Strong at Strong’s hotel and had a simple meal alone in the evening at a café or restaurant. He saw Daniel Cory, who was staying at a pension, two or three times a week. Late in June he suggested to John Hall Wheelock of Scribner’s the name “Triton” for the deluxe limited edition of his works that was then being prepared by the New York publisher. The idea for the title came from Bernini’s Triton fountain that ornamented the square containing the Hotel Bristol, Santayana’s regular residence in Rome. At this time Santayana’s old friend Mrs. Toy was recovering from a surgical operation at her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When Santayana took steps to initiate a subscription among her friends to help her with medical expenses, he learned that an adequate fund of $1,150 had been raised already. But he asked his nephew to set aside a thousand dollars for her in case it were needed. This summer sojourn in Paris was very disappointing to Santayana. By contrast to Rome, which impressed him as bustling, cheerful, and confident, he found the mood in Paris to be dismal and depressed; “unhappy and stricken” is his phrase (George Sturgis, 5 June 1936). He was also oppressed by the unsettled and unsettling nature of life in Paris at that time, which included strikes, communist agitation and demonstrations, and talk of revolution. These factors prompted him to leave Paris early for Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland, on 12 August. Both Cory and Strong left Paris then too, for the same reasons, with Cory heading back to England and Strong to Cannes. At Glion, Santayana was visited by Jacques Duron, whom he disliked, finding him unpleasant and officious (Cory, 20 September 1936). His intention was to return to Rome around September 30, but he also cut short his time in Glion and returned to Rome on September 21.
Preface xxv
In July civil war broke out in Spain. Santayana was worried about the safety and well-being of the Sastres (whom he knew would be on the side of Franco and the Falangists), and of his cousin Manuela Santayana, a few years younger than himself, unmarried and living in Madrid, and his old friend Mercedes Escalera whose principal residence was also in Madrid. Correspondence with these persons in Spain became increasingly difficult as the weeks and months went by and the civil war spread and intensified. Santayana became aware that the letters and checks he sent to Manuela and Mercedes were not received by them. In December he does manage to get a check for a hundred and twenty British pounds to Mercedes, but he remains cut off from Manuela and the Sastres. Then he learns, in a letter from her physician in Madrid, that his cousin Manuela has died. It is amid these anxieties and difficulties that on 16 December 1936 Santayana acknowledges his seventy-third birthday with receipt of a greeting card from the Sturgis family and a Christmas card from a fan who is an inmate of the Michigan State prison. Yet another event on the international scene occurred at this time. This was “the Simpson affair” involving the abdication of King Edward VIII of England and his subsequent marriage to Wallis Simpson, an American divorcée. This event, noted by Santayana, was troubling and disappointing to many, though undoubtedly romantic, glamorous, and exciting to others. Additional events of this latter part of 1936 included publication of the first two volumes of the Triton Edition as well as of a German and a Swedish translation of The Last Puritan. To facilitate publication of the German version, by Beck in Leipzig, Santayana was obliged to agree to the omission of any remarks in the novel that might be regarded as antiGerman or anti-Goethe. Two days before Christmas, Santayana was visited in Rome by George Cuevas, who gave a rather dismal account of conditions in his family. One or both children appeared to be suffering from a glandular ailment, and Margaret, according to her husband, was “nervous, depressed, and very changeable in her caprices” (Strong, 23 December 1936). A week later, however, Santayana again wrote to Strong with better news about his daughter and her family: the children were evidently not really ill and “Margaret herself,” he wrote, “looked very well.” This letter was to “erase if possible any unpleasant impression” caused by his earlier report of the condition of the Cuevas children and their mother (Strong, 2 January 1937). Christmas 1936 was for Santayana like any other day, except that his room at the Bristol was enlivened by a floral bouquet sent from Boston by wire from George and Rosamond Sturgis. William G. Holzberger
Acknowledgments This comprehensive edition of Santayana’s personal and professional correspondence has been over thirty years in the making, and a great number of persons in many different walks of life have contributed to it. It was begun by Daniel Cory in the late 1960s as a two-volume sequel to his 1955 Scribner’s edition of two hundred ninety-six letters by Santayana. I began collaborating with Cory on the project in 1971. After his sudden death by heart attack on 16 June 1972, I worked on the letters with the assistance of his widow, Mrs. Margot Cory, who was his successor as the Santayana literary executor. I continued to work on the preparation of a comprehensive edition of Santayana’s letters until I joined the project to produce a multi-volume critical edition of Santayana’s works headed by Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., General Editor. As textual editor of The Works of George Santayana it was necessary to deflect my attention substantially from the letters in order to help prepare the first four volumes of the edition for publication.1 In 1988 Professor Saatkamp and I decided to incorporate the letters into the comprehensive edition of Santayana’s writings as the fifth volume, and work on the letters resumed. At that time, however, the staff of the Santayana Edition was concentrating on preparation of the text of Volume IV, Santayana’s novel, The Last Puritan, and the focus of attention and principal resources had to be directed toward completion of work on that volume, which was published in 1994. Since publication of the novel, however, the focus of the editorial staff has been on completion of the letters volume. Included in the host of persons who have, over an exceptionally long period of time, contributed in many different ways to this large and complicated project are both private individuals as well as representatives of libraries and other institutions. Many of these persons no longer occupy the positions they did when they contributed to this project, and others are no longer alive. While it is impossible to acknowledge here everyone who helped make this edition of Santayana’s letters a reality, we wish at least to mention those persons and institutions whose contributions were absolutely vital to the successful completion of the project.
xxviii
Acknowledgments
Foremost, perhaps, among these individuals is the late Margot Cory. Margaret Degen Batten Cory was born in England on 27 November 1900 and, after many years’ residence in Italy, died in England on 30 March 1995. As the Santayana literary executrix and heir to her late husband’s ownership of Santayana’s literary properties, Margot Cory owned the copyright in Santayana’s letters. Not only did Mrs. Cory agree to the continuation of work on this edition after her husband’s death, but she aided and encouraged its realization in many significant ways. In the early stages she made typewritten transcriptions of hundreds of letters, both to her husband and to others. Indeed, many letters to various individuals could not have been included had not Mrs. Cory, in an age before photocopying machines, first made handwritten copies of letters lent to her husband which she later recopied on the typewriter. Mrs. Cory’s interest in this project was extremely keen, and it is our deep regret that she did not have the satisfaction of seeing the letters volume published during her lifetime. The names of private persons who possess letters by George Santayana are given in the list of Manuscript Locations, and we are very grateful to these individuals for providing, often as gifts, photocopies of their letters. I wish to thank especially those who also contributed valuable information and who aided this project in other ways as well. Foremost is Richard Colton Lyon. Not only has Professor Lyon supplied copies of his own substantial and valuable correspondence, but he has been of great assistance in locating other letters. It was through the kind cooperation of Professor Lyon that I learned the whereabouts of the late Mrs. David M. Little, formerly Mrs. George Sturgis, the wife of Santayana’s nephew. With help from Professor Lyon, Mrs. Little provided copies of letters that Santayana had written to her former husband, who had for many years served as Santayana’s financial manager. Mrs. Little, before her death on 17 February 1976, was of unique service to this project by supplying information about the Sturgis family, and a great many footnotes to the letters are the result of information that she provided. Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis Little was devoted to “Uncle George” both during and after his lifetime in a way that might be expected of few nieces by marriage. Mrs. Little’s son, Robert Sturgis, a Boston architect, is also warmly thanked for permitting inclusion of his letters from his granduncle, for arranging for the deposit of Santayana’s letters in the Sturgis Family Papers in Harvard’s Houghton Library, and for his interest in the comprehensive edition of Santayana’s writings and his continued helpfulness to the editors.
Acknowledgments
xxix
The late Dr. Corliss Lamont, a distinguished humanist and author and a life-long admirer of Santayana, was, over the years, a constant friend to this project. His direct financial aid to the Santayana Edition, together with his concern and assistance with various problems, were always much appreciated. The extensive collection of Santayana manuscripts and other materials in Columbia University’s Butler Library constitute Dr. Lamont’s gift to Santayana scholarship. Other private owners who have been particularly helpful include Mr. Guy Murchie Jr., whose glosses on the letters to his father have provided information for footnotes to those letters. Professors Justus Buchler and Peter Viereck also supplied helpful information about their letters from Santayana. Several individuals have personally supported this project with generous financial gifts, professional advice, and scholarly research. These include Morris Grossman, Professor Emeritus, Fairfield University; John Lachs, Centennial Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University; Emil Ogden, Ogden Resources Corporation, College Station, Texas; John McCormick, Professor Emeritus, Rutgers University; Henny Wenkart, Professor and Editor, New York City; and Excmo. Sr. D. Francisco Javier Jiménez-Ugarte Hernandez, Spanish Ambassador to Greece, who helped arrange the grant from the Comité Conjunto Hispano-Norteamericana. Most recently, the Edition has received a challenge grant in memory of Mr. and Mrs. Kendall Berry of Blytheville, Arkansas, which helps insure continued publication. Santayana Edition Board members who have continuously assisted the project in many and various ways are Willard Arnett, Hugh Dawson, Morris Grossman, Angus Kerr-Lawson, John Lachs, Richard C. Lyon, Douglas MacDonald, John Michelsen, Andrew Reck, Beth J. Singer, Timothy Sprigge, and Henny Wenkart. Many learned and distinguished scholars have contributed directly to the making of this edition. Among my Bucknell colleagues are several who have provided help with editorial tasks. Perhaps our greatest debt is due Professor Mills Fox Edgerton Jr., who has given most generously of his time, energy, and thoroughgoing knowledge of Romance languages. Not only has he translated the Spanish letters to José and Isabel Sastre, and provided numerous translations of words and phrases, but he has searched for Santayana letters during his travels through Spain. On one occasion he acted as my emissary to Santayana’s grandnephew, the late Don Eduardo Sastre Martín, of Madrid and Ávila, in an effort to learn the whereabouts of any Santayana manuscripts or other materials extant in
xxx
Acknowledgments
Spain. We are grateful to Professor James M. Heath of the Bucknell Classics Department, who has continually and unstintingly given of his time and specialized knowledge in assisting the editors with the transcribing and translating of Greek and Latin words and phrases and the tracing to their origins of quotations in these ancient languages. Mark W. Padilla, Associate Professor of Classics and Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, has also helped with translations of Latin words and phrases. Professor John Gale of the Modern Languages and Linguistics Department has rendered much the same sort of assistance with French words and phrases, and Professor Marianna M. Archambault and her husband, Professor Paul Archambault of Syracuse University, have also been helpful with questions relating to the French and Italian languages. A friend and colleague in the Bucknell English Department, Professor James F. Carens, member of the Harvard class of 1949, has helped in a variety of ways: by discussing the edition with me, making valuable suggestions based upon his own experience as an editor of letters, by serving as a guide to and about Harvard University, and by reading drafts of the Introduction to this volume and making suggestions for revision that I not only adopted but believe have significantly improved the quality of the Introduction. Peter Hinks, Associate Editor with the Frederick Douglass Papers, Yale University, collated letters at the Beinecke Library. English Department chairmen who have aided in important ways are Harry R. Garvin, the late John W. Tilton, Michael D. Payne, Dennis Baumwoll, and John Rickard. Bucknell University officers who have supported this project by supplying funds for materials and travel, allowing me released time from teaching duties, and providing office space, equipment, and supplies specifically for work on the letters are Wendell I. Smith, former Provost; Larry Shinn and Daniel Little, former Vice Presidents for Academic Affairs; Eugenia P. Gerdes, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences; and former Associate Deans Barbara A. Shailor and S. Jackson Hill. To all of these colleagues I extend deep and sincere gratitude. Texas A&M University officers and faculty who supported our work over many years include John J. McDermott, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, who directed the project during the transition from Texas to Indiana; Woodrow Jones, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts; Ben M. Crouch, Executive Associate Dean; Charles Stoup, Senior Academic Business Administrator; Robin Smith, Professor and Head, Department of Philosophy and Humanities; Kenneth M. Price, Professor of English; Robert A. Calvert, Professor of History; and Scott
Acknowledgments
xxxi
Austin, Professor of Philosophy. Special thanks to Sherman D. Frost for his ongoing support of the work of the Edition. His help with computer-related questions, and maintenance of the Santayana Edition web page is a significant contribution to our progress toward publication of the letters. Since its move to Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), the Edition has had the unconditional support of the University and the School of Liberal Arts. In particular, we must acknowledge the diligent work of Marianne S. Wokeck, Editor; Johanna E. Resler, Assistant Editor; Joshua B. Garrison; Jessica F. Kohl; and Kimberly A. O’Brien, who have become completely involved with the final preparation of the letters for publication. Special thanks to the entire staff of the Dean’s office, who have assisted with our day-to-day work since the decision to relocate. Noteworthy support has come from Gerald L. Bepko, Vice President for Long-Range Planning and Chancellor of IUPUI; William M. Plater, Executive Vice Chancellor and Dean of the Faculties; Mark Brenner, Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Education; Curtis R. Simic, President, Indiana University Foundation; Nathan Houser, Director and General Editor, Peirce Edition Project; Paul R. Bippen, Dean, Indiana University-Purdue University Columbus; Janet Feldmann, Director, Library and Media Services, IUPU Columbus; and Steven J. Schmidt, University Library, IUPUI. We are grateful to Nadine C. Martin and Martin Coleman for their assistance with translations and annotations. An eminent textual scholar who has contributed to this edition in significant ways is G. Thomas Tanselle, Textual Editor of The Writings of Herman Melville (a critical edition in fifteen volumes) and a foremost authority on editorial scholarship. Professor Tanselle has been very helpful in responding to queries about editorial matters, and his writings on textual scholarship have served as a fundamental guide to the editors of the Santayana Edition. Thanks to Robert H. Hirst for conducting the inspection of Book Five of the letters for the Committee on Scholarly Editions of the Modern Language Association of America, and to John Unsworth, co-chair of this committee, for his guidance and support. Mr. Harold Kulungian has given me several useful hints and suggestions. He ascertained the correct date of Santayana’s letter to B. A. G. Fuller of 11 January 1905 (misdated in Cory’s 1955 edition as 1904). Hugh J. Dawson of the English Department of the University of San Francisco and a member of the Editorial Board of the Santayana Edition has been a valuable
xxxii
Acknowledgments
source of information on the location of letters and has made many other notable contributions to this project. His frequent travels and researches in Europe have resulted in the acquisition of copies of three letters to the late Professor Enrico Castelli, whom Professor Dawson interviewed at his home in Rome in 1976. Our thanks also to Professor R. W. B. Lewis, the distinguished biographer of Edith Wharton, and to Dr. Marion Mainwaring, a professional researcher who attempted to locate additional letters to Santayana’s Harvard classmate William Morton Fullerton that— in addition to the four letters to Fullerton included in this edition—were believed to exist. I am very grateful to the late Richard Ellmann, the noted biographer and editor, Fellow of New College and Goldsmiths’ Professor of English Literature in Oxford University. During the sabbatical year I spent at Oxford working on the letters edition (1975–76), Professor Ellmann was particularly helpful in discussing the plan for the edition and making suggestions regarding every aspect of the project. Indeed, his edition of the letters of James Joyce, together with the edition of Oscar Wilde’s letters by Rupert Hart-Davis, were the earliest models for this edition of Santayana’s letters. A special note of thanks is due to Professor J. Albert Robbins of Indiana University, who served as Chairman of the Committee on Manuscript Holdings of the American Literature Section of the Modern Language Association of America, in charge of gathering information for the updated edition of American Literary Manuscripts, an invaluable source of information regarding library manuscript holdings. Professor Robbins and his staff responded to my request, early in 1976, for additional information regarding the location of Santayana holograph letters in library collections, by undertaking a “hand search” of file data before their material was computerized sufficiently to make such a search less laborious. The result of their efforts was the locating and acquiring of a substantial number of letters, the existence of which had not previously been suspected. Yet another friend from the beginning is James Ballowe of Bradley University. An accomplished poet, critic, author, and a distinguished Santayana scholar and editor, Professor Ballowe is warmly acknowledged here for his continual interest in and encouragement of this project and for his willingness to be helpful in every way. We are grateful to the late Paul G. Kuntz, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Emory University, for the work he did in collating our transcriptions of Santayana’s letters to Mrs. Bernard Berenson against the originals in the
Acknowledgments
xxxiii
Berensons’ Villa I Tatti (now owned by Harvard University) in Settignano, Italy. Special thanks are due individuals who sent copies or gave permission for their Santayana letters to be photocopied by the libraries in which they are held. These include Robert Lowell (Houghton Library, Harvard University); Robert Fitzgerald; Mrs. Ann P. Howgate (letters to her late husband, George Washburn Howgate, who, in 1938, became Santayana’s first biographer); Mrs. Christina M. Welch, daughter of John P. Marquand, and Mr. Carl D. Brandt (Houghton Library, Harvard University); Mrs. Arthur Davison Ficke (Beinecke Library, Yale University); Dr. Cecil Anrep, of Villa I Tatti, at Settignano, Italy, letters to Bernard and Mary Berenson; and Lino S. Lipinsky de Orlov. Max Schwartz, brother of the late Benjamin Schwartz, who, in 1936, with Justus Buchler, edited Obiter Scripta: Lectures, Essays and Reviews, searched through his brother’s papers in an effort to discover additional Santayana correspondence. Mrs. Max Eastman (Lilly Library, Indiana University); Horace M. Kallen (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City and the American Jewish Archives, Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, Ohio); Lewis Mumford; Milton K. Munitz; and Paul Arthur Schilpp (founder and editor of The Library of Living Philosophers, the second volume of which was devoted to the philosophy of Santayana). Sidney Hook gave permission for the inclusion here of his Santayana letters published in The American Scholar (Winter 1976–77). George Knox helped locate the letters to Carl Sadakichi Hartmann (University of California, Riverside). Father Ceferino Santos Escudero, of the University of Madrid, who compiled a bibliography of Santayana’s writings, supplied copies of the two letters in Spanish to Miguel de Unamuno and J. L. Ochoa; the English translations of these letters were done for this edition by Mr. Henry C. Reed. I am particularly grateful to the late Spanish poet, Jorge Guillén, for permission to receive a copy of his letter from Santayana in the Houghton Library, and to Mary de Rachewilz, curator of the Ezra Pound Archive in Yale’s Beinecke Library, who allowed librarians to check our transcriptions of letters to her father against the original holograph letters before the Archive was officially opened. I wish also to thank Mme. de Rachewilz for her kindness and hospitality to my family and me during visits to Brunnenburg, at Tirolo di Merano, where, in the early stages of the letters edition, I conferred with Mrs. Cory on the project. I am grateful to the late Don Eduardo Sastre Martín, Santayana’s grandnephew, for the interviews in his home in Madrid that he gave to my colleague
xxxiv
Acknowledgments
Professor Mills F. Edgerton Jr. and for his help in obtaining copies of letters in Spanish to his parents, José and Isabel Sastre. Thanks also to Pedro García Martín, Emilio Santos Sastre, and Ana Sastre Moyano, who provided copies of letters and postcards written to Santayana’s sister and brother-in-law and other members of the Sastre family. The late Mr. Hy Oppenheim, a retired lawyer and an avid student of Santayana’s writings, is remembered with thanks for his frequent informative communications and for his gifts of copies of Santayana’s works. Thanks, too, to Mr. David Wapinsky, a devoted student of Santayana’s writings, for sharing with us the fruits of his researches into the existence of undiscovered Santayana manuscript materials. Realization of a project of this magnitude would be impossible without the cooperation of a host of librarians, archivists, and technical members of the staffs of a great number of libraries. Many of the personnel who contributed remain anonymous to us. Still others were persons whose names we learned through our correspondence with them and their institutions twenty or thirty years ago. Doubtless many of these persons are no longer associated with the libraries with which they were once connected. For this reason, and because space is necessarily limited in an edition of this size, we are prevented from listing here the names of the scores of dedicated staff on whose conscientious and generous assistance this edition has been so utterly dependent. But I wish to express the profound thanks of the editors to each and every one of these colleagues. We must, however, acknowledge here individually a few persons upon whose cooperation and assistance this project has fundamentally depended. These are the principal librarians at libraries containing major collections of Santayana manuscript materials. Mr. Kenneth A. Lohf, Librarian for Rare Books and Manuscripts of the Butler Library at Columbia University, has had responsibility for the largest and most important collection of Santayana materials. Mr. Lohf and staff, including Bernard Crystal, Rudolph Ellenbogen, and Jean Ashton, have been a never-failing source of cooperation and assistance to the editors, for which we are very grateful. Harvard’s Houghton Library, as would be expected, is another treasure trove for Santayana scholars. I know that Daniel Cory counted the Librarian of the Houghton, Mr. William H. Bond, as a valued personal friend, and we deeply appreciate his kind assistance. Other persons at the Houghton who have been particularly helpful to us are Leslie A. Morris, Elizabeth A. Falsey, Rodney Dennis, Jennie Rathbun, Mrs. Richard B. Currier, and Ms. Deborah B. Kelley. The Charles
Acknowledgments
xxxv
Scribner’s Sons Archive, in the Princeton University Library, is a huge and invaluable collection of the correspondence of many prominent authors whose works have been published by the house of Scribner. The late Charles Scribner IV has the gratitude of scholars generally for continuing the policy of his company of preserving all correspondence with authors. I am personally in Mr. Scribner’s debt for his unfailingly kind attention to my questions and requests pertaining to publication by his company of Santayana’s writings, for permission to receive photocopies of letters from the Scribner Archive and to reproduce and publish them in this edition. Librarians at Princeton who so effectively assisted us in the acquisition of photocopies are Alexander P. Clark, Jean F. Preston, and Don C. Skemer, Curators of Manuscripts; Margaret M. Sherry, Archivist; and Mrs. Mardel Pacheco and Mrs. Michael Sherman of the Manuscripts Division. At the Alderman Library of the University of Virginia we wish to thank Michael Plunkett and Anne Freudenberg, Curators of Manuscripts; Adrienne Cannon, Special Collections; and assistants Elizabeth Ryall and Gregory A. Johnson. At the Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas at Austin, Cathy Henderson, Barbara Smith-LaBorde, Mary M. Hirth, and June Moll, Librarians, have been particularly cooperative in aiding our work; as have Thomas F. Staley and Mr. F. W. Roberts, Directors of the Center; and staff including Sally Leach, David Farmer, and John R. Payne. Mr. Thomas M. Whitehead, Head of the Special Collections Department of the Samuel Paley Library at Temple University, was most cooperative in enabling us to acquire copies of the large collection of Santayana letters in the archive of the London publishing firm of Constable and Company, Ltd. Special thanks are also due to several librarians at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University for their continuous cooperation and valuable services over many years including Ms. Dorothy Bridgewater, formerly Acting Head of the Reference Department; Ms. Carol Park of the Reference Department; Mr. Kenneth Nesheim, formerly Acting Curator, Collection of American Literature; Mr. Donald Gallup, Curator of American Literature; Mr. Peter Dzwonkowski, Assistant to the Curator, who very helpfully collated our transcriptions of Santayana’s letters to Ezra Pound against the originals in the thenunopened Pound Archive; and Mr. Robert O. Anthony, adviser to the Walter Lippmann Papers Collection. The Rockefeller Archive Center houses the majority of Santayana’s letters to Charles Augustus Strong (368). David Rockefeller, Alice Victor,
xxxvi
Acknowledgments
Darwin Stapleton, and Thomas Rosenbaum were extremely generous in providing copies of these letters to the Edition on very short notice. Librarians of specialized collections who have been particularly helpful to us are Ms. Fanny Zelcer of the American Jewish Archives; Mr. James Lawton of the Boston Public Library; Mr. Monte Olenick of the Brooklyn Public Library; Mr. John C. Broderick, Chief, The Library of Congress; Mr. Andrew Berner and Ms. Susan Grant, the University Club Library, New York City; Doña Dolores Gomez Molleda, Director, CasaMuseo Unamuno, University of Salamanca, Spain; Mr. Ezekiel Lifschutz, Archivist, and Mr. Marek Web, Archives Department, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York City. Librarians of the Ellen Clarke Bertrand Library at Bucknell University have provided aid in several important ways, and I wish to thank especially Mr. George Jenks and Mrs. Ann de Klerk, former Directors of the Library who provided a room in the Library specifically for work on the letters edition. Other librarians of the Bertrand Library that must be acknowledged here for their special assistance are Mrs. Helena Rivoire, Head of Technical Services; Ms. Patricia J. Rom, Head of the Reference Department; and Mr. Ronald B. Daniels, Head of Public Services. I am also much obliged to the librarians and staff of the Bodleian Library and the English Faculty Library of Oxford University for allowing me the continued use of the resources of those fine institutions while working on the edition during my residence at Oxford from September 1975 to July 1976. We are very grateful to the institutions that have provided the financial support on which the completion of this project depended. First and foremost is the National Endowment for the Humanities. The award of a Research Fellowship for 1975–76 enabled me to devote a full year to getting the project underway. Since 1976 the Endowment has underwritten the comprehensive edition of Santayana’s Works, in which the letters edition is included. Officers and staff members to whom we are especially indebted for their indispensable support are James Herbert, Director, Division of Research Programs, Margot Backas, Michael Hall, George Lucas, Douglas Arnold, Stephen Veneziani, and Alice Hudgins. Other organizations that have contributed importantly to the completion of the letters edition are The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for granting a Fellowship for work on the letters edition to Daniel Cory in 1972; the American Council of Learned Societies for awarding me two separate grants for work on the project; and to the Committee on
Acknowledgments
xxxvii
Scholarly Development of Bucknell University for the award of grants that allowed me to devote several summers to work on the letters edition. We wish also to acknowledge the student assistants who, over the many years of work on this collection of Santayana’s letters, have labored alongside the editors with much-appreciated dedication, performing tasks essential to the completion of this project. The first student editorial assistant to work on the letters project was Keith Washburn, a graduate student in English at Bucknell who helped during the initial stages in 1972. Mrs. Robin Hummel Kenner worked on the project from September 1972 until January 1978, beginning during her undergraduate years and continuing on after graduation. Mrs. Kenner, in a pre-computer era, made most of the original typewriter transcriptions of the letters. Kristine Dane worked on the project from July1991 through May 1997, beginning as an undergraduate and continuing to work on the project while pursuing graduate studies. Her contributions to the letters edition were many and various. The other Bucknell students who worked on this edition of Santayana’s letters are listed here in chronological order of their connection with the project, from earliest to latest: Laurie Russell, Karen Hoffnagle, Elizabeth Smith, Kathy Bittner, Afsaneh Bahar, Hugh Bailey, Roberta Visaggio, Jeanne Wiggers, Caroline Keller, Cherri Lee Smith, Beth Lynn Davis, Lori Fraind, Wendy Van Wyck, Michael Wardell, and Jennifer Beck. Let us thank here also Mrs. Ruth Snyder, formerly secretary to the Classics and History departments at Bucknell, who, in the mid-1980s, made our original typewritten transcriptions of the letters from Santayana to Scribner’s editor John Hall Wheelock of the period 1946–52 which had just then been made available. At Texas A&M University graduate assistants involved with the project include Karen Antell, Ann T. Butler, John Cavin, Matthew Caleb Flamm, Luis Guadaño, Kara Kellogg, Nakia S. Pope, Robert Renzetti, Wayne Riggs, Clay Davis Splawn, and James Dan Unger. Special thanks to Denise Johnston Barrychuck, Jodine Thomas, Lori Moore, Margaret B. Yergler, Anne Divita, and Connie Chavez, students and staff who worked with the Edition for extended periods of time. At the University of Tampa, special thanks are given to editorial assistants Shirley Cueto and John W. Jones, and to research assistants Austria M. Lavigne, Jodi Lerner, and Nina Mollica. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the persons with whom I have worked very closely for a long time on this edition of Santayana’s letters and whose collaboration has made possible its completion. First, I want to
xxxviii
Acknowledgments
thank especially my friend and colleague of many years, the General Editor of The Works of George Santayana and Associate Editor of this edition of the letters, Herman J. Saatkamp Jr., with whom I have had the pleasure of coediting the four earlier volumes of the Critical Edition. Not only has Professor Saatkamp been responsible for overseeing and directing all phases of the Works edition, including this volume of letters, but in his frequent travels through this country and indeed all over the world he has sought everywhere and frequently found previously unknown or unlocated Santayana correspondence. During those travels he has also spent countless hours in numerous libraries making sight collations of our transcriptions (taken from Xerox copies of Santayana’s handwritten letters) against the original holograph letters. This edition of Santayana’s correspondence owes a very great deal to the boundless energy and enthusiasm for Santayana’s writings that Professor Saatkamp has brought to it, and I am sure that, like me, Santayanans everywhere are very grateful to him. Another person who made a very significant contribution to this letters edition is Donna Hanna-Calvert, who was for several years the Associate Editor of The Works of George Santayana at the Texas A&M University headquarters of the project. Ms. Hanna-Calvert was always a most astute, congenial, and helpful colleague, and I am indebted to her both for her assistance with the letters project as well as for her collaboration on earlier volumes of the edition. I owe her much for making my working visits to the editorial offices at Texas A&M very pleasant, comfortable, efficient, and productive. To the current Associate Editor of The Works of George Santayana (and also of this edition of the letters specifically), Kristine W. Frost, this letters volume and I are very heavily indebted. Ms. Frost has had the responsibility of coordinating and executing the multiple tasks of preparing the text of the letters edition for publication. She has assisted the General Editor and me in every conceivable aspect of the preparation of this letters edition while simultaneously organizing and carrying out collation schedules for future volumes of the Works edition that are currently in preparation, and directly supervising the activities of our student helpers and other editorial assistants. I wish also to express here to Kristine Frost what I know all of us on the edition especially appreciate in working with her: I mean her invariably equable temperament, her unshakable good nature. Working with her is always a pleasure.
Acknowledgments
xxxix
I want to thank especially my wife, Annegret, for her many years of service to this letters edition (as well as to earlier volumes of The Works of George Santayana) as editorial assistant. She has supported my work on this project in every conceivable way. The help and companionship she provided on the numerous and extensive travels that this work has entailed often transformed difficulty, inconvenience, and hard labor into achievement and adventure. I am grateful to her for all the effort, encouragement, and patience that she has contributed to the completion of this enterprise. Our other editorial assistant on the letters edition, Brenda Bridges, at Texas A&M, also richly deserves recognition here and the gratitude of the editors for effectively carrying out many important and demanding tasks, including researching the information for much of the footnote annotation to the letters. Thanks to Ms. Bridges’s astuteness and unflagging perseverance, the extensive and exceptionally valuable collection of letters by Santayana to Charles Augustus Strong—long believed lost or destroyed—were located and copies acquired for this edition. Therefore, to all these kind, cooperative, expert, and industrious persons and magnanimous institutions that have contributed so materially and indispensably to the production of this edition of Santayana’s letters, I extend my deep gratitude. William G. Holzberger Professor of English Emeritus Bucknell University 1 Volumes published to date: I Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography (1986); II The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory (1988); III Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1989); IV The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel (1994).
Introduction William G. Holzberger George Santayana (1863–1952) was one of the most learned and cultivated men of his time. Born in Spain and educated in America, he taught philosophy at Harvard University for twenty-two years before returning permanently to Europe at age forty-eight to devote himself exclusively to writing. He knew several languages, including Latin and Greek. Besides his mastery of English, he was at home in Spanish and French (though he modestly down-played his knowledge of those languages). As a young man, Santayana studied Italian in order to read Dante, Cavalcanti, Michelangelo, and other Italian Platonizing poets in their own language; and, in later life, as a result of his long residence in Rome, he acquired facility in speaking Italian.1 While a graduate student in Germany during 1886–88, Santayana lived with Harvard friends in an English-speaking boardinghouse in Berlin, thereby missing an opportunity to learn to speak German properly. However, he could read the original versions of German literary and philosophical works. He also knew the world, having lived for protracted periods in Spain, America, Germany, England, France, and Italy. A true cosmopolitan, Santayana nevertheless always regarded himself as a Spaniard and kept his Spanish passport current. He possessed many talents and had a multifaceted personality, and each of those facets is reflected vividly in his letters. World famous as a philosopher, he was also a poet, essayist, dramatist, literary critic, autobiographer, and author of a best-selling novel. The numerous letters referring to The Last Puritan, his novel begun in 1889 and completed over a period of forty-five years on 31 August 1934,2 describe the way in which a modest story of college life evolved into a major study of American culture and modern civilization. The letters incorporate a thoroughgoing statement of Santayana’s own critical interpretation of The Last Puritan. Santayana’s letters represent the full range of his interests, knowledge, and achievements, and students of English prose style will encounter in them superb examples of epistolary writing. They are of supreme value to the biographer. Some letters are important for establishing dates of sig-
xlii
The Letters of George Santayana
nificant events in Santayana’s life and career. For instance, the 13 October 1933 letter to Daniel Cory describes Santayana’s discovery of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger and the similarity of his own theory of essences to Heidegger’s ontology. Other letters illuminate Santayana’s philosophical system. The 1 March 1949 letter to Richard C. Lyon is an excellent example of the “philosophical” letters. In it Santayana states his views on matter, idea, the self, intuition, and other perennial philosophical issues, relative to the views of philosophers such as Plato, Descartes, Kant, Berkeley, Fichte, Kierkegaard, Bergson, and Russell. The second paragraph of the 21 September 1917 letter to Charles Augustus Strong constitutes a succinct and very clear expression of Santayana’s controversial theory of essences; and the huge collection of Santayana’s letters to Strong is in itself a treasure-trove of revelations of the development of Santayana’s philosophical system.3 In fact, we find in Santayana’s letters not only a distillation of his philosophy but also a multitude of new perspectives on the published work. The responses to his correspondents are filled with spontaneous comments on and restatements of his fundamental philosophical ideas and principles. Because Santayana’s philosophy was not for him a thing apart, but rather the foundation of his existence, the letters indicate the ways in which his entire life was permeated and directed by that philosophy. Essential to Santayana’s position is the Greek ideal of the “life of reason,” a conception of the good life as requiring a continual commitment to the pursuit of self-knowledge, discipline, and an unromantic determination to harmonize rather than indulge the passions. It is the ideal of sophrosune or moderation venerated by classical philosophers like Aristotle and despised by modern ones like Bertrand Russell. The fullest expression of Santayana’s philosophical system, which we may observe developing in his letters, is in the four volumes of Realms of Being, published over a period of fourteen years (1927 to 1940). Santayana devotes a volume to each of the four realms: essence, matter, truth, and spirit. These realms are not so much regions or elements of being as they are kinds or representations thereof. Santayana’s formulation of the realm of essence caused him, in the view of several of his critics, to be allied with Platonic idealism; however, Santayana’s essences, unlike those of Plato, are not the ultimate reality. For Santayana essences are merely an infinite number of real though non-existent passive forms. The unconscious and unformed realm of matter is the sole source of power and existence. In Santayana’s view, the embodiment of essences by matter results in the substantial physical world. Unlike Plato, for whom spirit or consciousness exists eternally and independently of matter, Santayana conceived of spir-
Introduction
xliii
it as conscious self-awareness generated by matter when the vital physical organism (or psyche, in Santayana’s terms) achieves a certain level of organization, as in a human being. Spirit, for Santayana, reluctantly shares the career of the body that has generated it. If it were free to do so, spirit would range impartially over the spectacle of existence. But, because of its ineluctable identification with the career of a specific individual organism, spirit is pulled away from its natural tendency to disinterested observation by the necessity of attending to the requirements of the organism to which it is bound. In Santayana’s letters we see dramatic representations of the predicament of the philosopher whose spirit, in its effort to seek and comprehend the truth of things, necessarily strives to transcend the confinements and limitations of particular perspectives, personal or national allegiances, or historical contexts and observe things impartially under the aspect of eternity. But, because the philosopher is nevertheless an individual and mortal person, subject to the conditions of his environment and physical organism, he must, however reluctantly, be called back to the never permanently escapable present personal, social, political, material reality. That Santayana was keenly aware of this dichotomy is made perfectly clear in his published writings, in his personal life, and in his letters. His striving for a transcendental perspective devoid of personal, national, or ideological bias is seen in his perennial effort to stand aloof from social, political, or professional organizations that would demand of him an allegiance to their particular agendas and make impossible, even intermittently, the perspective of eternity. At the same time, we can see his recognition of the limitations and obligations placed upon every human individual by one’s nationality, genetic inheritance, and psychological conditioning. This recognition is reflected in the fact that Santayana always identified himself as a Spanish citizen, and (despite the ultimately atheistic character of his philosophical principles) a Roman Catholic. It is reflected also in the record of loyalty and devotion to family and friends that we observe in the letters. Perhaps the greatest problem for Santayana, as manifested in the letters, was the life-long effort of the philosopher to reconcile his inclination to live in the eternal with the necessity of the individual human being to live in the here and now. A succinct statement of his positions on religion, science, and poetry is found in the 31 August 1951 letter to Ira D. Cardiff. In that letter Santayana attempts to explain his unbifurcated view of religion and naturalism, and he indicts positivism for unimaginativeness. Because Santayana’s philosophy is one of materialism and naturalism, wherein
xliv
The Letters of George Santayana
everything—including spirit or consciousness—has a material basis, there can be no personal immortality of the kind traditionally conceived of by religion. The individual spirit is contingent upon the continued existence of the physical organism or psyche that generated it. At the dissolution of that organism in death, the spirit, as a consequence of that disorganization of matter, is annihilated. Except, therefore, where consciousness is temporarily allied to some physical organism, nature is unconscious and indifferent to human interests. There are, therefore, no supernatural beings, no disembodied spirits, no gods. Thus religion does not describe an actual otherworldly realm but rather only this world idealized and represented mythopoetically. For Santayana religion—and even science—is a kind of poetry. Other letters tell us much about Santayana’s literary method and the achievement of his apparently effortless style. We learn from many letters that the effect of spontaneous flow in his published writing is actually the result of a method involving several drafts and much revision leading to the finished work. In the letter of 13 December 1949 to Rosamond Thomas (Sturgis) Little, he quotes the compositional principle of Boileau as representing his own method: “Polish it continually, and repolish it; add occasionally, and delete often.”4 He frequently had two or three compositions going forward simultaneously, moving from one to another as inspiration and interest guided him. Sometimes he used material pruned from one project for the substance of another (for example, the incorporation of the surplus of his Spinoza lecture, “Ultimate Religion,” in his book, The Realm of Spirit, as described in the 14 May 1932 letter to Cory). And, apropos of Cory, the detailed criticisms that Santayana makes of the drafts of essays that Cory sent to him for comment constitute a sort of concise manual for writers, and they reveal Santayana’s unremitting quest, through continuous review and revision, for perfection of diction and form in his own writing. Some letters (for instance, that to the literary scholar and critic William Bysshe Stein of 1 September 1949) reveal that Santayana conceived of the practice of literary criticism as stating the critic’s personal taste rather than making objective evaluations. The letters also document Santayana’s subordination of aesthetics to ethics and his view of the relativism of the latter. Still other letters, like the 15 March 1946 one to Rosamond Sturgis (later Mrs. Little), express Santayana’s traditionalist views on education and American education in particular. In addition to illuminating his ideas, views, and accomplishments as thinker and writer, Santayana’s let-
Introduction
xlv
ters are especially important in revealing the personal side of the famous author. Nowhere else—not even in his autobiography, Persons and Places— does he express so directly and succinctly his fundamental attitudes and convictions or reveal more intimately the characteristics of his complex personality. Each reader of the letters doubtless will relish in them what he or she is most interested in knowing about Santayana’s life and thought; and many persons will use this edition to consult specific letters as these pertain to certain ideas, persons, or historical events. But anyone who reads extensively in this collection will see emerge the distinctive personality of the writer, in a kind of verbal self-portrait. There are, to be sure, other documents available in which a portrait of Santayana may appear, including the many fine articles and books about him, especially John McCormick’s critical biography and Santayana’s inimitable autobiography.5 These descriptions of Santayana’s personality and experience are extremely valuable in fleshing out our image of him as a person and writer. Private letters usually represent the most spontaneous and unguarded form of written expression,6 and, by focussing on Santayana’s letters as illustrative of their author’s personality and character, we discover in them a concentrated and revealing self-portrait. This verbal selfportrait, produced partly by unconscious revelations, contributes significantly to our conception of the sort of individual that Santayana was and, therefore, to our understanding of his writings. That Santayana was a precocious genius is evident from even a cursory reading of his early letters. Among the most interesting are those written in 1886 to his Harvard classmate, Henry Ward Abbot, while Santayana was pursuing graduate studies in philosophy in Germany. The maturity of view, intellectual acuteness, and power of expression in these letters are remarkable. Santayana’s perennial emphasis on the crucial importance of the Socratic principle of self-knowledge and the ethical doctrine of moral relativism7 characteristic of his most mature writings are nowhere more perfectly expressed than in the 6 October 1886 letter to Abbot written from Berlin when Santayana was not quite twenty-three years old. In response to Abbot’s indecision about going into business—as his family evidently wanted—or pursuing instead some other career, Santayana wrote: To do right is to know what you want. Now when you are dissatisfied with yourself, it’s because you are after something you don’t want. What objects are you proposing to
xlvi
The Letters of George Santayana
yourself? are they the objects you really value? If they are not, you are cheating yourself. I don’t mean that if you chose to pursue the objects you most value, you would attain them; of course not. Your experience will tell you that. … but success in getting after much labour what you really don’t care for is the bitterest and most ridiculous failure. Santayana had several other close friends among his Harvard classmates, and the fact that he was socially active during his undergraduate years (or at least as active as his very modest means would permit) is now well known. He had drawn cartoons for and served on the editorial board of the Harvard Lampoon; he was president of the Philosophical Club and took part in Hasty Pudding Club theatricals. But Santayana seems always to have been a rather formal person who resented what he considered undue familiarity. In the 21 August 1882 letter to John Galen Howard, written following their graduation from the Boston Public Latin School, Santayana expressed his unwillingness to be patronized even by the venerable headmaster, Dr. Moses Merrill: … I hope he has not had the impudence of addressing all the fellows by their first names, as he has done me. If he supposed I would be flattered by being treated with intimacy by him, he was greatly mistaken. If I did not deem it unwise to forfeit anyone’s good opinion merely for the pleasure of speaking out one’s mind plainly, I should have answered him and addressed him as “my dear Moses.” Forty-six years later, on 4 May 1928, Santayana wrote to his nephew and business manager, George Sturgis, that he had received a letter from a William C. Sturgis (a member of the prominent Boston family to which Santayana’s mother’s first husband had belonged) of whom Santayana had never heard: He calls me “George”, but I don’t know who he can be. Will you enlighten me? … When you reply please tell me whether he is habitually called William, Will, Willy, Billy, or Bill, so that I may live up to our relationship. Santayana was, of course, on a first-name basis with members of his immediate family, addressing his sister Susan as “Dear Susie,” and he was not so stiff as not to be on a first-name basis with other persons as well. In
Introduction
xlvii
letters to the intimate friends of his youth—for instance, his Harvard classmates—he addressed Henry Ward Abbot, Boylston Adams Beal, and Robert Burnside Potter as “Harry,” “Boylston,” or “Bob.” In later letters written to close male friends usually the person is addressed by the last name only, in the manner more common among men in an earlier time than it is today. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, Horace Meyer Kallen, and Logan Pearsall Smith are addressed as “Dickinson,” “Kallen,” or “Smith.” The Russell brothers ( John Francis Stanley, the second Earl Russell, and his younger brother, Bertrand) are each addressed simply as “Dear Russell.” Daniel Cory was undoubtedly Santayana’s closest friend during the last twenty-five years of his life, yet he is never addressed in any of the hundreds of pieces of correspondence that Santayana wrote to him in any way but as “Dear Cory.”8 In writing or speaking about Santayana, Cory referred to him simply as “Santayana” (though in conversation he sometimes referred to him as “the Master,” in the manner of Henry James’s disciples and scholars). In Santayana: The Later Years, Cory describes his arrival at Santayana’s bedside in Rome, shortly before the latter’s death, saying, “I’m here, Santayana,” so we may assume that once their friendship had been established Cory addressed his elderly friend simply as “Santayana.”9 (We do know that in Santayana’s last years his relationship with the young poet, Robert Lowell, became so friendly that Lowell, thanking Santayana for helping him financially, humorously addressed him in one letter as “My dear Uncle.”)10 Santayana’s editors at Constable and Scribner’s—Otto Kyllmann and John Hall Wheelock, respectively—are always addressed as Mr. Kyllmann and Mr. Wheelock, as is Mr. Scribner when Santayana writes directly to the head of the New York publishing house. Even close women friends of many years—like Nancy Saunders Toy, Elizabeth Stephens Fish Potter, and Mary Williams Winslow—are addressed in the letters as “Mrs. Toy,” “Mrs. Potter,” or “Mrs. Winslow.” The impression of Santayana as an essentially formal man is reinforced by the language of his letters, in which there is a notable absence of slang or obscenity. This is so much the case that one is a little startled to encounter in a few letters even such mild imprecations as “damn” or “damned.” As in his published writings, Santayana’s diction in the letters might be described the way critics have characterized that of Hawthorne and Henry James: “formal but alive.” Santayana’s formal style, however, in no way inhibited the expression of his formidable wit. There is little or no broad humor in Santayana’s let-
xlviii
The Letters of George Santayana
ters, not much in the way of comedy or fun (except perhaps for the 31 August 1887 “Rabelaisian” letter to William Morton Fullerton and the 25 November and 10 December 1904 “Arabian Nights” letters to Mary Whitall Smith Berenson), but there is plenty of wit: dry, ironical commentary that is often paradoxical and ingenious and invariably in the service of some point that he is making. A typical example of Santayana’s irony and wit is found in the letter of 2 April 1923 to George Sturgis, in which Santayana comments on the recent appearance of the Scribner’s edition of his Poems: … a copy Scribner has sent me looks so mean and poverty-stricken that I am afraid they are doing it on the cheap, in order to make money. Money out of poems! I received $1.87 for the first two editions, and was thankful, the publisher having failed in the interval, as was to be expected.11 In another letter to George Sturgis two years later, Santayana comments on “the instability of the female will,” describing his own present dependence upon the decisions of several women friends and relatives as to where and when he may be traveling. He mentions that his friend Charles Augustus Strong is enjoying the electric heating that Strong’s daughter, Margaret, had installed in her father’s Paris apartment against his will, and writes: … probably I shall go to a hotel [instead of joining Strong in the Avenue de l’Observatoire apartment], as Margaret herself may turn up at any moment—another case of La donna è mobile, especially with an auto-mobile, if you will excuse an Italian pun. For Margaret has one of her own much better than her father’s.12 In the summer of 1928 Santayana’s friend, the Yale English professor and popular literary critic William Lyon Phelps, and his wife were planning a trip to Spain, about which Santayana wrote: I admire your courage and that of Mrs. Phelps in going to Madrid in August. We might apply to it a story Strong likes to tell about a delegate’s description of the summer breezes of Chicago: that not content with coming out of the very mouth of hell, they had first blown over the State of Texas. For Texas read the plains of La Mancha, and you will know what awaits you.13
Introduction
xlix
A final example of the mordant irony of which Santayana was capable is in the 27 March 1939 letter to George Sturgis regarding Bertrand Russell, who, Santayana believed, like Russell’s elder brother, had wasted his genius through personal and political folly: Not that his philosophy would have been sound: he is a born heretic or genial madman, like John Knox or Giordano Bruno: yet he is preternaturally intelligent, penetrating, and radical; so that the more wrong he is the clearer he makes the wrongness of his position; and what more can you expect a philosopher to prove except that the views he has adopted are radically and eternally impossible? If every philosopher had done that in the past, we should now be almost out of the wood. As we encounter Santayana’s wit in the letters, we may occasionally find ourselves laughing out loud, but more often our amused response is of a quieter kind. Santayana’s sense of humor—or, more precisely, his witty and ironic cast of mind—is much akin to that of Henry James (with whom he shares not only a formal style but also other qualities and characteristics)14 and not at all like that of Mark Twain. Concomitant with Santayana’s ironical view of the world was his own capacity for laughter. He likened himself to Democritus, “the laughing philosopher,” and said that his friends told him that he laughed too much. Yet most of the photographs of Santayana depict him as very grim. He did not like being photographed and thought the typical grinning snapshot a very inaccurate representation of someone. Thus, almost all of the extant photos of Santayana—with the exception of a group taken in the Blue Sisters’ nursing-home in Rome toward the end of his life—portray him as an unsmiling and somber man. The same is true of the drawings made from photographs to illustrate the dust jackets of several of his books, one of which, he complained to Scribner’s, made him look “cross-eyed and ferocious.”15 These somber or hostile-looking pictures, combined with his political conservatism and reputation for avoiding society, have contributed to a widespread notion that Santayana was remote and forbidding; “cold-blooded” is a term sometimes applied to him. It is true that the Santayana represented in the letters is unsentimental and toughminded, and his love of solitude and his philosophic resignation give the impression that he was more indifferent and detached from human life and feeling than are most people. But the letters provide considerable evidence that Santayana was capable of profound emotional attachments.
l
The Letters of George Santayana
So far as we know, Santayana never had a romantic relationship with a woman, though there were several women with whom he enjoyed close friendship and lifelong correspondence. Mrs. Toy, Mrs. Potter, and Mrs. Winslow fit this description. And, until her death in 1928, Santayana’s elder half sister Susan was, in complex ways, the beloved woman in his life. However, Santayana—like Schopenhauer and Nietzsche—saw women as fundamentally different from men, as is illustrated by a 17 February 1887 letter to Henry Ward Abbot: A woman, for example, is despised in so far as she is a human individual competing with others for life, especially because her methods of competing are small and mean; but she is loved and even worshiped as the complement of man, as something filling out his life without sharing his qualities. Feminists, with some justification, condemn Santayana as a sexist who characterized women as inferior. Santayana believed that, compared to men, women are generally not as intelligent, interesting, or physically fine; men are the superior gender. This exaltation of the masculine may be derived from Santayana’s own sexual nature. From his letters, from the events of The Last Puritan and his remarks about the novel in the letters, and from the conversation about A. E. Housman reported by Cory,16 it seems clear that Santayana’s sexual orientation was not conventional. The early letters to his Harvard classmate, Henry Ward Abbot, are particularly significant in this regard. On 23 April 1887 Santayana wrote: … I hate my own arrogance and would worship the man who should knock it out of me. Says a Spanish song: I am searching land & ocean For the man that I might love, And whenever my heart finds him Then he will have found his slave. Man or thing—it makes no difference—but heaven grant it be no woman. … Of course all girls aren’t foolish—some are charming and I am tender on two or three myself; but if I ever humbug a woman into marrying me, it will be a piece of selfishness on my part, depend upon it, and not a conquest on hers. The comments of the young Santayana in this letter about women and marriage are common in the banter of young men, but the general tone
Introduction
li
here is not heterosexual, and, for this reason and in light of Santayana’s other writings, we are disinclined to take seriously the statement about his being “tender” on two or three girls. A year earlier, in the spring of 1886 (his senior year at Harvard), Santayana had met the tall, athletic, good-looking, cultivated, and supremely self-confident Earl Russell, and he evidently fell in love with the young aristocrat. His letters to Abbot of 1887 reveal his complete infatuation: … Russell is the ablest man, all round, that I have ever met. You have no idea what a splendid creature he is, no more had I till I had seen a great deal of him. He isn’t good, that is he is completely selfish and rather cruel, although I fancy I made too much of his heartlessness at first. But then both practically and intellectually he is really brilliant. … I know I am making a fool of myself in writing about him. … but I send a note of his so that you may judge for yourself and also have some idea of the men I am seeing here. Pass the note on to Herbert Lyman and let him keep it or send it back to me. I am going tomorrow to stay with Russell again, for he is laid up and wants company. … Don’t tell this round, I beg of you, but I tell you because I am telling you everything to-day. I make an exception of Herbert, because I should have to tell him sooner or later, and he won’t chuckle over it as if it were a joke merely, which it isn’t.17 In a letter to Abbot written a week later, Santayana reveals the abject character of his relationship with Russell: … what I call my “fall from grace and self-control” … is simply this. Russell has a way of treating people which is insufferably insolent and insulting. Never for a moment did I imagine I could allow anyone to treat me in such a way. But I find that instead of caring for my own dignity and independence … I find that I don’t care a rap for my interest in myself or my ways of doing things, but that I am quite willing to stand anything, however outrageous, that comes from a certain quarter. This is what has happened to me. I am a fool to say a word about it—especially when people think that I am talking about trifles. … don’t imagine I am referring to “country matters”.18
lii
The Letters of George Santayana
The revelations of these letters to Abbot are franker expressions of Santayana’s willingness to abase himself and accept abuse from Russell than are found in Persons and Places, including the episode he relates there about accidentally pulling the young earl into the Thames and being violently abused verbally by him for clumsiness.19 And Santayana’s willingness to swallow his pride and suffer indignities from Russell seems to have been unending. In the autumn of 1923, when he was almost sixty and planning a trip to England to deliver the Herbert Spencer Lecture at Oxford, he wrote to Russell saying that he hoped there would be a chance to see him. Russell’s reply was: “Do as you like,” and Santayana responded as follows: If you leave it to me, I will certainly come [to Russell’s house in Hampshire]. I don’t believe that anything has really happened to alter our relations to one another which were always tacit and expressed in conduct rather than words. You now say more than you ever said to me, even in our young days, about being “attached to me”; you must have been, in some way which in spite of my cold-blooded psychology I don’t pretend to understand. In that case, why drop me now, when certainly there has been no change on my side except that involved in passing from twenty to sixty? Let me come, anyhow once, and we can judge better whether everything is as usual or whether the barrier you speak of—which certainly is not “Elizabeth” or her affairs—really exists. Shall it be next Tuesday, and if so, what train shall I take? Yours ever20 Santayana did visit Russell, who was indifferent, even frequently mistaking his name and calling him “Sargeaunt,” the name of another of Russell’s friends, a Latin master at Westminster.21 As in the cases of Henry James and A. E. Housman there is no evidence that Santayana was an active or practicing homosexual or that his youthful relationship with Russell (or anyone else, for that matter) was homosexual in a physical sense. Indeed, the Hamlet echo of his warning to Abbot not to construe his attachment to Russell as involving “country matters” might indicate that Santayana regarded his devotion as transcending the merely physical.22
Introduction
liii
Only a deep emotional attachment could have enabled Santayana to continue for so many years to tolerate Russell’s unpleasantness and indifference; yet Santayana appears always to have been aware of Russell’s faults. This insuperable critical faculty doubtless sobered Santayana’s affections for other persons about whom he felt less strongly: he had no illusions about people. For instance, he appreciated his nephew, George Sturgis, for his able stewardship of his financial properties, as he had George’s father—Santayana’s half brother Robert—for performing the same service. He frequently closed letters to George Sturgis with “Yours affectionately,” and even signed one to him of 1927: “With much love.” But other letters reveal that he did not care for his nephew any more than he had for George’s father; he found both men lacking in sensitivity and sympathetic imagination.23 But the letters show that Santayana was genuinely affectionate toward several persons. He was very well disposed toward George Sturgis’s first wife, Rosamond, with whom he carried on a long correspondence. Santayana appreciated Rosamond’s thoughtfulness and kindness in sending him packages of food and clothing, after the war in Italy had ended and supplies in Rome remained short. He regularly signed his letters to her “Your affectionate Uncle George.” He was also very fond of George’s and Rosamond’s eldest son, Robert (“Bob”) Shaw Sturgis, who had visited him several times in Rome in 1944 when Bob was there in the U.S. Air Force. His letters to Bob after the war, when the latter was a Harvard undergraduate studying architecture (the field that Santayana had once thought seriously of making his profession), are full of unfeigned interest in the young man’s activities and plans. The grandfatherly affection that the octogenarian felt for his good-looking, intelligent, and artistic young grandnephew is unmistakable in both the letters Santayana wrote to Rosamond and those to Bob himself. If Santayana’s affection for young Bob Sturgis was grandfatherly, his feeling for the young Daniel Cory was fatherly. Santayana first met Cory in April 1927, when Cory was twenty-two and Santayana sixty-three, and a long, intimate friendship began. Cory, who first encountered Santayana’s writings at Columbia University, had left college before completing a degree and had gone to live and work in London. Impressed with an essay that the young man had written on his philosophy and sent to him, Santayana offered to pay Cory’s expenses for a visit to Rome. He was pleased by Cory’s critical acumen, his interest in and grasp of Santayana’s philosophy, and engaged the young man to assist him in
liv
The Letters of George Santayana
arranging the manuscript of The Realm of Matter for publication. This was the beginning of a friendship and professional association that lasted for twenty-five years, until Santayana’s death in 1952. Initially, Santayana did not think of Cory’s position of literary assistant or secretary as becoming permanent.24 But Cory, while working for Santayana, made the acquaintance of Santayana’s friend, the American epistemologist Charles Augustus Strong, who also wanted someone to help him prepare his writings for publication, and Cory became Strong’s assistant or secretary as well. Both Strong and Santayana paid Cory a modest monthly allowance. This combined income enabled Cory to live separately, usually in England; but he spent protracted periods living near Strong, either in Paris or at Le Balze (“The Cliffs”), Strong’s villa at Fiesole, near Florence. Cory also made infrequent visits to Santayana in Rome, helping him with his writing projects. For the most part, during their long association, Cory lived far from Santayana, usually in another country, and sometimes several years passed without the two men seeing one another. Despite the separation, however, Santayana continued to send Cory his monthly allowance, with special supplements for medical bills, clothing, and travel. Though he never expected Cory’s dependency upon him to become permanent, Santayana eventually realized that it had and accepted responsibility for supporting Cory as long as he could do so. Before the mail between Italy and the United States was cut off by World War II, he arranged with Scribner’s for Cory to receive the royalties on his books, so that the latter might not be left without resources. In the beginning, Santayana’s appreciation of Daniel Cory was based largely upon Cory’s solid understanding and sincere advocacy of Santayana’s philosophy, as shown in the 21 May 1928 letter to Cory: … you understand the true inwardness of it, and your ways of expressing it are enough your own for me to feel sure that it is not a casual adoption of a technical theory, but a true participation in the Idea. Later, Santayana’s admiration and affection for Cory was increased by Cory’s considerable charm, his talent for reading aloud (a valuable skill in the revision of manuscripts and something that Santayana felt he himself could not do well), his enterprise in addressing himself to the task of propagating Santayana’s views by writing articles on his philosophy for publication in professional journals, and his representation of Santayana in communication with the editors of leading periodicals—such as T. S. Eliot
Introduction
lv
of The Criterion and Henry Seidel Canby of The Saturday Review of Literature—about publication of Santayana’s writings in their magazines. He also believed that Cory was someone he could depend on in a personal emergency, someone who would assist him if he became seriously ill. And it was, indeed, Cory who traveled from England to Rome to be with Santayana during the final weeks of his life and who made the difficult arrangements for Santayana’s funeral and burial in the Campo Verano Cemetery in Rome.25 Despite his affection for Cory and his appreciation of Cory’s personal loyalty and devotion to his philosophy, Santayana did not hesitate to criticize him—both in letters to Cory and to others—on several counts: for being a spendthrift; lacking initiative; failing to complete independent literary projects that he had begun (such as Cory’s unfinished autobiographical novel, Michael ); repeating to him unpleasant things that C. A. Strong had said about him (Santayana), thereby exacerbating his always difficult relations with Strong;26 and for wasting “the best years of his life playing golf.”27 The affectionate side of Santayana revealed in the letters contrasts with the cold-bloodedness of which he has been accused (and of which he even accuses himself). This conception of Santayana—as lacking in human warmth and sympathy—may well derive, in part, from his political views and his tendency to perceive things sub specie aeternitatis. He was a true modern in terms of the bleakness of his outlook and in his chronic detachment. There is also something very Spanish in the essential starkness of his view of life. In 1917, during World War I, Santayana wrote a letter to Bertrand Russell that Russell quoted from in his autobiography to demonstrate Santayana’s lack of feeling: As for deaths and loss of capital, I don’t much care. The young men killed would grow older if they lived, and then they would be good for nothing; and after being good for nothing for a number of years they would die of catarrh or a bad kidney or the halter or old age—and would that be less horrible?28 This letter suggests that Santayana did not consider the anguish suffered by the families, sweethearts, and comrades of the soldiers killed in the war, or indeed the loss of life to the soldiers themselves. However it is evident from numerous other letters that Santayana wrote during the period 1914–18 that he was profoundly distressed by the terrible events of this war and especially by the appalling loss of life on all sides. The letters
lvi
The Letters of George Santayana
show, in fact, that he was so depressed by these events that he found it difficult to think or write. Twenty-seven years later, writing to Andrew J. Onderdonk on 20 January 1945, he was less discomfited by the horrific events of World War II: Perhaps the years since we last saw each other, and the many since we saw each other often—34!—have made me more inhuman than ever; but public and private tragedies move me now much less than they did. I think of all the empires reduced to filthy little heaps of ruins; of all the battles and sieges in the histories, and all the horrible fates of potentates, tyrants, patriots, and saints; and what now happens to us seems almost a matter of course. Santayana believed that, in order to understand the world, the observer must not be too closely attached to it or too actively engaged in it. The social activism of a Bertrand Russell or a Jean-Paul Sartre was anathema to him. His detachment could, on occasion—as in his comments on the two world wars—appear as sheer lack of interest in human well-being. In October 1928 Horace M. Kallen wrote asking Santayana to “sponsor” Kallen’s new book on “the Sacco and Vanzetti letters” or to join a committee that Kallen was forming to protest the way in which the case of the two Italian anarchists had been handled. In a 22 October 1928 letter Santayana refused Kallen’s request, making the following comment: I don’t know whether those men were condemned for what, morally, wasn’t a crime, or whether they were innocent altogether: in any case, it was a scandal to put off their execution so long, and then to execute them. It shows the weakness, confusion, and occasional cruelty of a democratic government: it is more merciful to the condemned, and more deterrent to others, to execute them at once, as do my friends the Bolsheviks and the Fascists. But that, I imagine, is not what your book is intended to prove. Santayana, somewhat chillingly, places the emphasis not upon the possibility that two innocent men were condemned and executed, but rather that they were not executed more quickly once the American court had pronounced them guilty. In several other letters he uniformly refuses requests to participate in public demonstrations to endorse or denounce either side of a particular moral or political issue.
Introduction
lvii
Santayana’s conservative politics—he described himself as a Tory29— sometimes caused him to take positions that seem mean-spirited. In 1940 Rosamond Sturgis was assisting a young working-class college student with his expenses. In a 10 October 1940 letter to her Santayana authorized Rosamond to have George Sturgis withdraw a hundred dollars from his account to be added to the fund for the student, but he included this comment: … to tell you the whole truth, I don’t like to give in charity to the deserving; it only encourages them to make greater demands on life, to strain, and to increase the half-educated proletariate [sic]; whereas the undeserving merely get a drink, are happy for half an hour, and no worse afterwards than they were before. However, it may be the American ideal to increase the half-educated proletariat until it includes everybody; but would that be a happy result? Again, the apparent callousness and cynicism of Santayana’s remarks in this letter are disconcerting: we wonder at the smug injustice of a social philosophy that accepts the accident of birth as the sole determinant of opportunity and privilege for some and denial and deprivation for others. Santayana frequently has been accused of anti-Semitism, and in several letters we do find unpalatable statements about Jews and Jewishness. On 12 August 1936 he wrote to George Sturgis that he was reconciled to the necessary transitoriness of things, that all conservatisms were doomed because nothing could be kept up permanently, and for example added: The Jews, for instance, aren’t in the least like Abraham or King Solomon: they are just sheenies. And in a 1 May 1938 letter to Mrs. Toy about Walter Lippmann, Sidney Hook, and Irwin Edman, he wrote: Are the Jews going to repent of being anti’s, for fear that soon there should be nothing left to be anti against? After all they have made themselves very comfortable in Christendom, and if nothing but an international proletariat remained, it would not offer them such brilliant careers as professors and prime minister and newspaper proprietors. Mrs. Toy’s response to this letter evidently recommended that Santayana avoid anti-Semitism, for in his 12 August 1938 letter to her he observed:
lviii
The Letters of George Santayana
I ought to love the Jews, as they seem to be my only friends intellectually, beginning with Edman—not to go back to Spinoza. These remarks of Santayana’s, though critical and contemptuous of what he perceived to be ancient and modern Jewish attitudes, did not prevent his appreciation of virtuous individual Jews. Ironically, Baruch Spinoza was Santayana’s acknowledged master, and there was no philosopher for whom he had greater respect. He appreciated the keen interest in his own philosophy taken by Morris Cohen and Irwin Edman, and he appears to have been fond of his former graduate assistant at Harvard, Horace M. Kallen, to whom, after his retirement from Harvard, he had given his doctoral cap and gown and to whom he wrote numerous warm, friendly letters,30 frequently complimenting Kallen on his publications. To George Sturgis on 31 January 1941 Santayana wrote that his doctor in Rome (Luigi Sabbatucci, who served as his physician from 1935 until Santayana’s death in 1952) had, like himself, never heard of lire miste (evidently a form of Italian wartime currency) “although he is a Jew, and a very nice person.” But Santayana’s most redeeming statement on the matter of racial prejudice is probably that found in his 23 September 1926 letter to John Jay Chapman, an American bigot who had offered Santayana the presidency of “The Aryan Society”: Against whom is the Aryan Society directed? Against the Arabians, the Jews, the Chinese, and the blameless Ethiopians? I confess that I don’t like the Jewish spirit, because it is worldly, seeing God in thrift and success, and I know nothing of the blacks; but the Arabs and the Chinese seem to me in some ways, apart from the costume, nearer to the Greeks than we are in Europe and America: they have taken the measure of life more sanely. Might it not turn out, then, that the Aryan Society, if it stood for the life of reason, was especially directed against the Aryans? Races, like nations, seem an unfortunate class of units to identify with moral ideas. If, therefore, Santayana’s comments in his letters and other writings are perceived by some readers as repugnantly anti-Semitic, others today— including a number of Jewish scholars—argue that such a view is an exaggeration and reject the charge that Santayana was truly anti-Semitic. At the very least, the quotation from the letter to Chapman indicates that he was not a racist.
Introduction
lix
Charles Loeser, Santayana’s classmate at Harvard, was from a prosperous Jewish family. Santayana enjoyed Loeser’s company and admired his mastery of foreign languages and expert knowledge of art, which Santayana thought even greater than Bernard Berenson’s. The two young men traveled together and afterward remained friends for many years. The young Santayana also enjoyed the forays he made into Boston society, but most especially he relished the company of other sophisticated or cultivated young men. In some letters we find the elderly philosopher reminiscing about the bachelor dinner parties of the 1890s in Cambridge that had given him some of the most pleasant moments of his life. As he got older, however, Santayana more and more preferred to be alone, and a correlate of this love of solitude was his dislike of controversy, a rather surprising characteristic in a philosopher. On 6 June 1939 he wrote to Mrs. Toy: “I don’t like mental fierceness, even on my own side in philosophy”. Many years earlier, during the summer following his retirement from Harvard, Santayana had written (on 2 August 1912) to his former colleague and department chairman, George Herbert Palmer, that he expected to benefit from conversations in Cambridge, England, with his friends Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore: … whose views are near enough to mine to be stimulating to me, while the fact that they live in an atmosphere of controversy (which for myself I hate) renders them keenly alive to all sorts of objections and pitfalls which I need to be warned of, in my rather solitary and unchecked reasonings. If Santayana enjoyed occasionally discussing philosophical issues with friends (and, in the last part of his life, with many of the persons who visited him at the nursing home in Rome), he decidedly did not enjoy professional conferences. In the 23 September 1932 letter to Mrs. Toy in which he reported on his recent participation in the Domus Spinozana conference at The Hague (6–10 September 1932), Santayana described the meetings as being “like all meetings and international conferences, rather tiresome and futile”; “in the end”, he had written to his sister Susan on 1 October 1913, “every philosopher has to walk alone.” And in the 18 July 1913 letter to the poet Arthur Davison Ficke, Santayana echoed Socrates’ remark to Crito in Plato’s dialogue of the same name: … what does it matter what other people think? If we care too much about persuading them we may disturb
lx
The Letters of George Santayana
their peaceful conventions to no good purpose, since they will never get anything straight, while we blunt the edge of truth in our own words. Santayana believed that if his auditors or readers could comprehend intuitively the truth of his views, they would accept them; but if they could not do so, there was no point in attempting to badger people into agreement. One must catch the spark if concurrence is to be genuine and meaningful. Agreement in intellectual matters, he felt, came about more through sympathetic understanding than through debate. Just as he did not like the gatherings of professors at professional meetings, neither did Santayana—with few exceptions—like individual professors; and he didn’t like being one himself. On 6 June 1912, at the time of his retirement from Harvard, he wrote to President Abbott Lawrence Lowell that “although fond of books and of young men, I was never altogether fit to be a professor”. Three years later, on 4 August 1915, he wrote to his former graduate student, B. A. G. Fuller, who was then on the Harvard philosophy faculty, about his disillusionment with teaching philosophy: … I can’t take the teaching of philosophy seriously in itself, either as a means of being a philosopher or of teaching the young anything solid: they merely flirt with that for a year or two instead of flirting with something else. Philosophy is not a science; it might be a life or a means of artistic expression, but it is not likely to be either at an American college. Contrary to the present-day practice of calling every college or university teacher of philosophy—from the greenest assistant professor to the hoariest veteran—a “philosopher,” Santayana made a significant distinction between a “philosopher” and what he referred to as a “mere professor” of philosophy.31 For Santayana the teaching of philosophy was a profession like any other; but, for the true philosopher, philosophy was not only a profession but also a vocation or way of life. In a humorous vein, he wrote to George Sturgis, his nephew and new financial manager, on 14 August 1921: In respect to money-matters, I am a true philosopher (not a mere professor of Phil. 10, 12, etc) and my one wish is not to hear about them, but to cash cheques and be happy.
Introduction
lxi
More seriously, he says in a 1926 letter to Lewis Mumford regarding Mumford’s discussion of him in The Golden Day: … I feel that you are thinking of me—quite naturally—as just a Harvard professor, author of a book called “The Life of Reason”. Your appreciation seems absolutely just, as directed upon that semi-public personage: but I never felt myself to be identical with that being, and now much less than ever.32 In a 16 June 1934 letter to Harry Austryn Wolfson, Santayana uses his favorite, Spinoza, to make clear his distinction between the philosopher and the “mere professor” of philosophy: I believe there is another reason also why Spinoza seems to me so pre-eminent: that in spite of being traditional, or because he was not distracted by side issues, he was an entire and majestic mind, a singularly consecrated soul. All these trite dogmas and problems lived in him and were the natural channels for his intuitions and emotions. That is what I feel to make a real philosopher and not, what we are condemned to be, professors of the philosophy of other people, or of our own opinions. Spinoza had been excommunicated by the rabbis in 1656 and banished from Amsterdam for his heretical ideas; living on the outskirts of the city, he earned a meager subsistence as a lens-grinder. Several years later, in order to maintain his intellectual independence, Spinoza turned down the offer of a chair of philosophy at Heidelberg. Santayana believed that, by retiring as soon as he could from Harvard, he had achieved a comparable independence. He expressed this idea of the necessary freedom of the philosopher in the 9 June 1937 letter to Cory saying: “you are now a recognised free lance in philosophy, as all philosophers ought to be.” While avowedly not fond of professors, Santayana nevertheless moved among them all his life, as many of his correspondents and many of his visitors during the years that he lived in hotels in Rome were professors. In fact, almost all of Santayana’s friends and associates were individuals of either social or intellectual stature, or both. In some of his letters he distinguishes between what he calls “nice” people (the well-bred, well-educated, and well-to-do) and common or ordinary people. His habit of choosing his friends from among socially prominent Americans and aristocratic Europeans led to accusations of sponging, social climbing, and
lxii
The Letters of George Santayana
snobbery. Santayana responds to the latter charge in the 8 September 1920 letter to William Lyon Phelps: I protest against being called a snob; what I love is what is simple, humble, easy, what ought to be common, and it is only the bombast of false ambitions and false superiority, that I abhor. There is no indication that Santayana, whatever his preferences for the well-born and well-bred, was ever anything but courteous to and considerate of persons in humble positions. In his letters, Santayana refers to the waiters in the restaurants he frequented as being his friends, and there are references to the servants in the hotels or private houses that he stayed in that express Santayana’s consideration of them and his desire to do the right thing and be thought well of by them. Perhaps Santayana received a certain satisfaction from the names distinguished by European aristocratic titles in some of the lists of persons he sent to his publishers to receive complimentary copies of his books, but there is no evidence of Santayana ever fawning on any Boston Brahmin or European aristocrat— not even Bertrand Russell’s elder brother, where the matter was complicated far beyond mere snobbery. One purpose of this introduction is to suggest the ways in which Santayana’s letters reveal various characteristics of his personality, how a self-portrait emerges from the letters. That portrait is both fascinating and invaluable in giving us a better understanding of the complex personality of someone who was a profound thinker, gifted artist, and sophisticated man of the world. By thus illuminating more subtly and fully Santayana’s personality and character, the letters can deepen our insight into his philosophical and literary works. (And many of the letters address directly the principal ideas and themes of those works.) But though remarkably interesting and informative, the letters make no sensational revelations about Santayana’s personal life. It is not at all the case with him—as it often is with celebrities—that the private individual differs dramatically from the public persona. On the contrary, the evidence of the letters is that Santayana was a person of exceptional integrity, a man with a clear conception of who and what he was and what he ought to be, and one who tried to live a life of reason in accord with this conception of himself. Nevertheless, the personality reflected in the letters is complicated and paradoxical. Some letters reveal Santayana as a political reactionary,
Introduction
lxiii
complacent about arbitrary inequalities of opportunity in society, approving of ruthlessly repressive forces like Mussolini and the Italian and Spanish fascists, and—in terms of his remarks about the Jews—insensitive about racial slurs. Yet the letters also show him as someone who rejected totalitarianism on principle, disapproved of capitalism on moral grounds, advocated a kind of state socialism, and was sympathetic to Bolshevism.33 They depict a thinker who aided and abetted creative expression in others even when that expression clashed with his own opinions. They show a man tolerant of irritating traits in family and friends, who frequently suffered annoyance and inconvenience in order to accommodate persons to whom he felt a debt of loyalty. They show us an honest man, generous with his money and time, often contributing to the financial support of relatives, friends, and needy strangers, and taking the time and trouble to write conscientious appraisals of works sent to him by other writers. All in all, the portrait of Santayana that emerges from the letters is that of a man devoted to his work, one who valued friendship and loyalty highly, was considerate and polite, but who quickly comprehended a situation and was never reluctant to speak his mind. We invariably find him giving his correspondents his frank opinions, irrespective of their own views. There is nothing of the boor or bully in this candor, but rather only a desire to be truthful. Santayana’s letters depict a person of rare gifts and remarkable accomplishments, a very private individual, neither curmudgeonly nor arrogant. They reveal a man endowed with great intellectual powers, living detached from and “above” the world, who was nonetheless thoroughly human.
Endnotes 1
Most of Santayana’s correspondence is in English. However, he wrote in Spanish to relatives and friends in Spain, and the 29 April 1945 letter (to Dino Rigacci) is in Italian. 2 Per 6 September 1934 to Cory. 3 The collection of 373 pieces of correspondence from Santayana to his Harvard classmate, life-long friend, and fellow professional philosopher C. A. Strong (1862–1940), over the half-century from 1889 to 1939, is second only in size to the collection of correspondence from Santayana to Daniel Cory (over the quarter-century from 1927 to 1952) totaling 400 items. Until recently, only a few items of Santayana’s correspondence to Strong had been located, and it was feared that the rest had been destroyed when German soldiers occupied the latter’s Villa le Balze, at Fiesole, Italy, during the Second World War. Fortunately, however, the rest was discovered early in 1999, housed in the Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Strong’s wife,
lxiv
The Letters of George Santayana
Elizabeth, was the daughter of John D. Rockefeller, and the letters were deposited in the Archive by Elizabeth Cuevas, Strong’s granddaughter, in 1994. 4 The letter reads: “Polissez-le toujours, et le repolissez, / Ajoutez quelquefois et souvent effacez.” 5 See especially Margaret Münsterberg, “Santayana at Cambridge,” American Mercury 1 (1924): 69–74; George W. Howgate, George Santayana (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1938); Dialogue on George Santayana, ed. Corliss Lamont (New York: Horizon Press, 1959); Bruno Lind, Vagabond Scholar: A Venture into the Privacy of George Santayana (New York: Bridgehead Books, 1962); John McCormick, George Santayana: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987); and George Santayana, Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography, Critical Edition, ed. William G. Holzberger and Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1986). (Further references to the autobiography are to the Critical Edition.) For a concise biography of Santayana as poet see Holzberger, “Introduction” to The Complete Poems of George Santayana (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1979), 23–82. Daniel Cory, in Santayana: The Later Years, A Portrait with Letters (New York: George Braziller, 1963), makes specific use of his letters from Santayana to illustrate aspects of Santayana’s character and personality. 6 Even in his personal correspondence, so careful and deliberate a writer as Santayana was never wholly spontaneous and unguarded. 7 “Moral relativism,” as Santayana uses the term, must be understood to include more than mere arbitrary choice of behavior. For Santayana, morals are relative to the individual and the specific situation, and the natural sanctions which determine acceptable behavior are immediate and absolute. 8 The letter of 18 December 1928 begins, without salutation: “Of course, dear Cory”; and within the letters to Cory of 21 May 1928, 1 July 1937, and 23 January 1940 we find the phrases “My dear Cory”, “For heaven’s sake, dear Cory”, and “Now, dear Cory”, respectively. But in the 352 letters to Cory that begin with a salutation it is uniformly “Dear Cory.” 9 The Later Years, 321. Cory’s part of the correspondence is unlocated; Santayana usually discarded letters after reading them. 10 Letter from Lowell to Santayana of 8 January [1950]. Santayana kept Lowell’s letters, which are in the Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin. 11 The first book of Santayana’s poems was Sonnets and Other Verses (Cambridge: Stone and Kimball, 1894). A revised, expanded edition was published in 1896. 12 14 May 1925. 13 15 July 1928. 14 Grattan Freyer, the late Irish literary critic, said to me that The Last Puritan was “like the best of Henry James.” 15 “And why has my photo been redrawn so as to make me cross-eyed and ferocious? I know that self-knowledge is often self-deception, but I feel not at all as this personage looks.” (1 February 1936 to Wheelock) 16 “I suppose Housman was really what people nowadays call ‘homosexual,’ [said Santayana].” “Why do you say that?” I [Cory] protested at once. “Oh, the sentiment of his poems is unmistakable, [Santayana replied].” There was a pause, and then he added, as if he were primarily speaking to himself, “I think I must have been that way in my Harvard days—although I was unconscious of it at the time.” (The Later Years, 40) 17 20 May 1887. 18 27 May 1887.
Introduction 19
lxv
Persons, 297–98. 5 September 1923 and undated letter written between 20 September and 24 October 1923. “Elizabeth” refers to the Countess Russell, the earl’s third wife, who had left him in 1918. 21 Persons, 517. 22 There is no evidence that Santayana ever had a physical sexual relationship with either a man or a woman. This suggests perhaps that whatever sexual promptings he may have experienced were sublimated to his thought and art and found expression in his writings. It is also possible that Santayana deliberately embraced the tradition of celibacy advocated by the Roman Catholic Church for members of the clergy (and by the religions of India and China for holy-men and wisemen). He had a great respect for the traditions of the Church and frequently refers to himself in the letters as monklike, saying that he could live happily in a monastery. 23 In a 30 September 1938 letter to Cory, Santayana described George Sturgis as “a nice person, but not very perceptive”; and in a 31 December 1944 letter to Rosamond Sturgis, from whom George recently had been divorced before his sudden death on 20 December 1944, Santayana wrote: “George never gave me any explanation of the estrangement that had arisen between you, and of course I respected his discretion and asked no questions. But I could well imagine that, like his father, he might prove hard to live with in the long run. In fact, when you came to Rome, I couldn’t help wondering how you ever decided to marry him. He was very good, very useful, and very able in many ways, and for me he proved a treasure (literally) in the management of my affairs, as his father had been too. But there was never a resposive [sic ] chord.” 24 For example, in the 2 August 1944 letter to George Sturgis, Santayana wrote: “Cory has been a problem for Strong and me for many years. He too is not a business man, and between us three we managed to land him, at the age of nearly forty, in no man’s land. I feel a certain responsibility for him, as it was as my disciple and secretary that he first turned to philosophy: but I never meant to make our connection permanent.” 25 The Later Years, 325–27. 26 “… perhaps you would do better not to report to either of us any nasty thing that the other may say, or do, in regard to his good old friend. It makes it harder to keep up the amicable tone of our relations. … Do help us to remain friends.” (11 November 1931 to Cory) 27 5 February 1936 to Rosamond Sturgis. 28 [December 1917]. 29 In the 12 May 1946 letter to David Page, Santayana says, while he is well aware that others regard his political views as “Fascism and Phalangism,” that he regards them as “Toryism.” 30 See, for instance, 15 and 25 September 1926 to Kallen. 31 This attitude of Santayana’s was more common in an earlier time. I recall Paul Arthur Schilpp espousing this view in class at Northwestern University during the 1950s. Schilpp made a point of reserving the term “philosopher” for the great figures of the history of philosophy and for contemporary theorists of international reputation. 32 16 December 1926, Lewis Mumford, The Golden Day (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1926). 33 “Something in me tells me that the Russian Bolsheviks are right—not in their conduct, which has been scandalous and silly—but in their sense for values, in their equal hostility to every government founded on property and privilege.” (6 April 1918 to Mrs. Winslow); “I think [Soviet Russian communism] is a splendid experiment. Lenin is as good as Lycurgus or Pythagoras. Let him have his way!” (6 April 1930 to Kallen); 20
lxvi
The Letters of George Santayana
“I am not a modern or liberal socialist: but I feel in my bones that our form of industrial society is very precarious, and that it will disappear, perhaps rather soon, as completely as the mediaeval or the Graeco-Roman civilizations have disappeared.” (4 October 1931 to George Sturgis); “I … agree with … [Karl Marx’s] low opinion of capitalism. … To my own mind, absurd as capitalism is—I live on invisible and unearned money myself, I don’t know why or how—it seems to be only a technical device accompanying industrialism: and the latter is the radical evil.” (15 April 1933 to Hook); “I prefer the Bolschies [to the current British government]; and perhaps everywhere, through one approach or another, it is to State socialism that we are bound” (19 October 1935 to R. S. Barlow); “But my ideal would be a communistic public life, as in the Spartan upper class or as in a monastery, if it went with perfect liberty in thought and in the arts, like painting or writing. And I should limit all the luxuries to public gardens, libraries, churches, theatres and clubs, where each member might satisfy his own taste and develop his own vocation. I have lived myself as far as possible on that plan, and found it satisfactory. But I dread uniformity imposed upon mankind; that is a waste of opportunities and a dull slavery. That is what I dislike in democracy and social pressure.” (9 May 1945 to Rosamond Sturgis)
List of Letters Book Five, 1933–1936 6 January 1933 9 January 1933 15 January 1933 18 January 1933 19 January 1933 25 January 1933 5 February 1933 12 February 1933 6 March 1933 7 March 1933 19 March 1933 28 March 1933 6 April 1933 10 April 1933 10 April 1933 12 April 1933 15 April 1933 [Mid-April?] 1933 26 April 1933 [May 1933] 10 May 1933 18 May 1933 31 May 1933 3 June 1933 3 June 1933 3 June 1933 11 June 1933 13 June 1933 19 June 1933 25 June 1933 10 July 1933
Otto Kyllmann Daniel MacGhie Cory Charles Augustus Strong Charles Augustus Strong Daniel MacGhie Cory George Sturgis Daniel MacGhie Cory Daniel MacGhie Cory Daniel MacGhie Cory George Sturgis Charles Scribner Jr. Charles Augustus Strong Logan Pearsall Smith Henry Ward Abbot Daniel MacGhie Cory Logan Pearsall Smith Sidney Hook Charles Augustus Strong Daniel MacGhie Cory Iris Cutting Origo Charles Augustus Strong Daniel MacGhie Cory George Washburne Howgate Daniel MacGhie Cory Ralph Barton Perry John Hall Wheelock Daniel MacGhie Cory Daniel MacGhie Cory Mary Annette Beauchamp Russell Daniel MacGhie Cory William Lyon Phelps
lxviii
List of Letters
11 July 1933 14 July 1933 14 July 1933 21 July 1933 [Late July 1933] [Before August 1933] 4 August 1933 15 August 1933 17 August 1933 29 August 1933 2 September 1933 6 September 1933 10 September 1933 20 September 1933 22 September 1933 25 September 1933 25 September 1933 2 October 1933 9 October 1933 13 October 1933 19 October 1933 28 October 1933 8 November 1933 13 November 1933 15 November 1933 20 November 1933 27 November 1933 28 November 1933 6 December 1933 9 December 1933 16 December 1933 16 December 1933 16 December 1933 16 December 1933 21 December 1933 25 December 1933 7 January 1934 16 January 1934 20 January 1934
George Sturgis Daniel MacGhie Cory Marie Mattingly Meloney Henry Ward Abbot Henry Ward Abbot Antonio Marichalar Charles Augustus Strong Daniel MacGhie Cory Charles P. Davis Henry Ward Abbot Daniel MacGhie Cory Charles Augustus Strong James C. Ayer George Perrigo Conger George William Russell Charles Augustus Strong John Hall Wheelock Daniel MacGhie Cory George Sturgis Daniel MacGhie Cory Daniel MacGhie Cory Daniel MacGhie Cory George Sturgis Daniel MacGhie Cory Sterling Power Lamprecht Daniel MacGhie Cory Daniel MacGhie Cory Daniel MacGhie Cory Henry Seidel Canby Evelyn Tindall Wendell T. and Mary Potter Bush Rafael Sastre González Evelyn Tindall Mr. Wallack Charles Augustus Strong Daniel MacGhie Cory Boylston Adams Beal George Sturgis Daniel MacGhie Cory
List of Letters 23 January 1934 26 January 1934 28 January 1934 31 January 1934 2 February 1934 4 February 1934 6 February 1934 7 February 1934 13 February 1934 19 February 1934 24 February 1934 26 February 1934 6 March 1934 13 March 1934 19 March 1934 20 March 1934 20 March 1934 21 March 1934 [c. March 1934] 25 March 1934 25 March 1934 4 April 1934 7 April 1934 8 April 1934 8 April 1934 14 April 1934 14 April 1934 18 April 1934 25 April 1934 5 May 1934 6 May 1934 10 May 1934 11 May 1934 14 May 1934 15 May 1934 20 May 1934 25 May 1934 26 May 1934 30 May 1934
John Hall Wheelock Daniel MacGhie Cory George Sturgis Mary Annette Beauchamp Russell Daniel MacGhie Cory Charles Augustus Strong Daniel MacGhie Cory Charles P. Davis George Sturgis Evelyn Tindall Daniel MacGhie Cory George Sturgis John Hall Wheelock Daniel MacGhie Cory Daniel MacGhie Cory Harold Atkins Larrabee Carl Clinton Van Doren John Herman Randall Jr. Mercedes Moritz Randall Daniel MacGhie Cory Samuel Martin Thompson Daniel MacGhie Cory Charles Augustus Strong Curt John Ducasse Daniel MacGhie Cory George Sturgis Evelyn Tindall Evelyn Tindall Daniel MacGhie Cory Adelaide Howard Evelyn Tindall Charles Augustus Strong Daniel MacGhie Cory Stuart Gerry Brown Charles Augustus Strong Charles Augustus Strong Charles Augustus Strong Daniel MacGhie Cory Evelyn Tindall
lxix
lxx
List of Letters
3 June 1934 4 June 1934 7 June 1934 8 June 1934 11 June 1934 11 June 1934 16 June 1934 16 June 1934 22 June 1934 25 June 1934 25 June 1934 3 July 1934 8 July 1934 9 July 1934 10 July 1934 12 July 1934 23 July 1934 25 July 1934 25 July 1934 25 July 1934 12 August 1934 16 August 1934 20 August 1934 26 August 1934 28 August 1934 6 September 1934 25 September 1934 26 September 1934 3 October 1934 3 October 1934 5 October 1934 7 October 1934 13 October 1934 20 October 1934 20 October 1934 23 October 1934 24 October 1934 26 October 1934 2 November 1934
Charles Augustus Strong Daniel MacGhie Cory Evelyn Tindall Sidney Hook Daniel MacGhie Cory Daniel MacGhie Cory Evelyn Tindall Harry Austryn Wolfson Evelyn Tindall Henry Seidel Canby Daniel MacGhie Cory Daniel MacGhie Cory Daniel MacGhie Cory George Sturgis Daniel MacGhie Cory Charles Earle Funk Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz Mary Potter Bush Daniel MacGhie Cory Charles Augustus Strong Daniel MacGhie Cory Daniel MacGhie Cory Horace Meyer Kallen Daniel MacGhie Cory Charles Augustus Strong Daniel MacGhie Cory Daniel MacGhie Cory Charles Augustus Strong Daniel MacGhie Cory George Sturgis Victor Francis Calverton George Sturgis Victor Francis Calverton Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz George Lawton Charles Augustus Strong Charles Augustus Strong Daniel MacGhie Cory Evelyn Tindall
List of Letters 3 November 1934 4 November 1934 6 November 1934 12 November 1934 12 November 1934 15 November 1934 17 November 1934 18 November 1934 22 November 1934 26 November 1934 28 November 1934 3 December 1934 5 December 1934 7 December 1934 7 December 1934 11 December 1934 12 December 1934 14 December 1934 17 December 1934 25 December 1934 25 December 1934 27 December 1934 10 January 1935 14 January 1935 19 January 1935 24 January 1935 26 January 1935 [February 1935] 10 February 1935 18 February 1935 5 March 1935 12 March 1935 26 March 1935 27 March 1935 29 March 1935 1 April 1935 7 April 1935 8 April 1935 11 April 1935
lxxi
Charles Augustus Strong Nancy Saunders Toy Victor Wolfgang von Hagen Daniel MacGhie Cory Evelyn Tindall Daniel MacGhie Cory Daniel MacGhie Cory Victor Francis Calverton Amy Maud Bodkin Daniel MacGhie Cory Otto Kyllmann Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz Daniel MacGhie Cory Otto Kyllmann Daniel MacGhie Cory Two Bryn Mawr Students Amy Maud Bodkin Frederick Champion Ward Evelyn Tindall Daniel MacGhie Cory Charles P. Davis Charles Augustus Strong Victor Francis Calverton George Sturgis Sylvia Hortense Bliss Daniel MacGhie Cory Frederick Champion Ward Evelyn Tindall Daniel MacGhie Cory George Sturgis Corliss Lamont Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz Charles Augustus Strong Henry Seidel Canby George Sturgis Louis Alexander Freedman Otto Kyllmann Otto Kyllmann Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz
lxxii
List of Letters
11 April 1935 20 April 1935 20 April 1935 28 April 1935 30 April 1935 3 May 1935 8 May 1935 9 May 1935 13 May 1935 16 May 1935 18 May 1935 20 May 1935 28 May 1935 30 May 1935 7 June 1935 7 June 1935 7 June 1935 9 June 1935 9 June 1935 13 June 1935 18 June 1935 18 June 1935 21 June 1935 21 June 1935 23 June 1935 26 June 1935 26 June 1935 28 June 1935 29 June 1935 1 July 1935 4 July 1935 5 July 1935 11 July 1935 13 July 1935 16 July 1935 20 July 1935 22 July 1935 26 July 1935 26 July 1935
Otto Kyllmann Boylston Adams Beal Otto Kyllmann Otto Kyllmann Max Forrester Eastman David Page George Sturgis John Hall Wheelock Otto Kyllmann Pauline Holmes William Lyon Phelps Otto Kyllmann Daniel MacGhie Cory Boylston Adams Beal Daniel MacGhie Cory Otto Kyllmann George Sturgis John Hall Wheelock Daniel MacGhie Cory Sterling Power Lamprecht Otto Kyllmann John Hall Wheelock Otto Kyllmann Charles Augustus Strong Otto Kyllmann Daniel MacGhie Cory Otto Kyllmann George Sturgis Manuel Komroff John Hall Wheelock Daniel MacGhie Cory Mary Potter Bush Daniel MacGhie Cory Charles Augustus Strong Charles Augustus Strong Otto Kyllmann John Hall Wheelock Daniel MacGhie Cory David Page
List of Letters 27 July 1935 27 July 1935 28 July 1935 1 August 1935 6 August 1935 18 August 1935 25 August 1935 25 August 1935 26 August 1935 28 August 1935 28 August 1935 3 September 1935 13 September 1935 14 September 1935 17 September 1935 19 September 1935 22 September 1935 24 September 1935 26 September 1935 26 September 1935 26 September 1935 27 September 1935 3 October 1935 12 October 1935 14 October 1935 17 October 1935 17 October 1935 19 October 1935 19 October 1935 22 October 1935 23 October 1935 26 October 1935 28 October 1935 31 October 1935 2 November 1935 12 November 1935 14 November 1935 16 November 1935 21 November 1935
Otto Kyllmann John Hall Wheelock Daniel MacGhie Cory Otto Kyllmann Charles Augustus Strong John Hall Wheelock Daniel MacGhie Cory Bonamy Dobrée Otto Kyllmann Otto Kyllmann John Hall Wheelock Otto Kyllmann Constable and Co. Ltd. Daniel MacGhie Cory Charles Augustus Strong Constable and Co. Ltd. John Hall Wheelock Charles Augustus Strong Daniel MacGhie Cory Daniel MacGhie Cory Sterling Power Lamprecht John Hall Wheelock George Sturgis Otto Kyllmann George Sturgis Otto Kyllmann John Hall Wheelock Ellen Shaw Barlow Robert Shaw Barlow Otto Kyllmann Charles Augustus Strong Daniel MacGhie Cory George Sturgis Daniel MacGhie Cory George Sturgis George Sturgis Otto Kyllmann John Hall Wheelock Charles Augustus Strong
lxxiii
lxxiv
List of Letters
25 November 1935 30 November 1935 6 December 1935 10 December 1935 11 December 1935 12 December 1935 15 December 1935 23 December 1935 25 December 1935 25 December 1935 [1936?] 1 January 1936 5 January 1936 6 January 1936 9 January 1936 13 January 1936 17 January 1936 25 January 1936 26 January 1936 26 January 1936 1 February 1936 2 February 1936 5 February 1936 5 February 1936 7 February 1936 8 February 1936 10 February 1936 12 February 1936 15 February 1936 16 February 1936 18 February 1936 18 February 1936 19 February 1936 19 February 1936 24 February 1936 28 February 1936 3 March 1936 16 March 1936 18 March 1936
Daniel MacGhie Cory Llewelyn Powys Daniel MacGhie Cory George Sturgis Rafael Sastre González John Hall Wheelock Sidney Hook Boylston Adams Beal Daniel MacGhie Cory George and Rosamond Sturgis Unidentified Recipient Otto Kyllmann Otto Kyllmann Bonamy Dobrée George Sturgis [Frank Raymond Leavis] Charles Augustus Strong Gorham Bert Munson Daniel MacGhie Cory Otto Kyllmann John Hall Wheelock Daniel MacGhie Cory Otto Kyllmann Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz Henry Seidel Canby George Sturgis William Jackson, Ltd. George Sturgis William Lyon Phelps Charles P. Davis Charles Augustus Strong Benjamin De Casseres David Page Daniel MacGhie Cory José Sastre González Daniel MacGhie Cory William Lyon Phelps C. L. Shelby
List of Letters 20 March 1936 25 March 1936 26 March 1936 26 March 1936 28 March 1936 29 March 1936 29 March 1936 30 March 1936 1 April 1936 1 April 1936 2 April 1936 3 April 1936 8 April 1936 9 April 1936 18 April 1936 25 April 1936 25 April 1936 26 April 1936 [Early May 1936] [c. May or June 1936] 1 May 1936 3 May 1936 5 May 1936 9 May 1936 15 May 1936 18 May 1936 19 May 1936 22 May 1936 26 May 1936 26 May 1936 27 May 1936 28 May 1936 4 June 1936 5 June 1936 9 June 1936 16 June 1936 21 June 1936 21 June 1936 22 June 1936
lxxv
Mr. Gross Charles Augustus Strong Cyril Coniston Clemens Daniel MacGhie Cory Bonamy Dobrée Robert Shaw Barlow George Sturgis John Hall Wheelock Daniel MacGhie Cory Henrietta Auchmity Sturgis Ingersoll John Hall Wheelock Charles P. Davis Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz Daniel MacGhie Cory George Sturgis Daniel MacGhie Cory Otto Kyllmann John Hall Wheelock John Hall Wheelock The Class of 1886 Robert Steed Dunn Robert Shaw Barlow George Sturgis Constable and Co. Ltd. Charles Scribner’s Sons Miriam Thayer Richards George Sturgis Constable and Co. Ltd. Daniel MacGhie Cory John Hall Wheelock John Hall Wheelock Charles Augustus Strong John Hall Wheelock George Sturgis Daniel MacGhie Cory John G. Moore George Sturgis John Hall Wheelock Robert Shaw Barlow
lxxvi
List of Letters
23 June 1936 28 June 1936 1 July 1936 6 July 1936 9 July 1936 17 July 1936 23 July 1936 31 July 1936 11 August 1936 12 August 1936 14 August 1936 16 August 1936 17 August 1936 17 August 1936 21 August 1936 21 August 1936 21 August 1936 26 August 1936 26 August 1936 28 August 1936 31 August 1936 6 September 1936 11 September 1936 13 September 1936 16 September 1936 16 September 1936 19 September 1936 20 September 1936 20 September 1936 22 September 1936 23 September 1936 26 September 1936 27 September 1936 1 October 1936 5 October 1936 8 October 1936 10 October 1936 11 October 1936 13 October 1936
John Hall Wheelock John Hall Wheelock Justus Buchler John Hall Wheelock Constable and Co. Ltd. John Hall Wheelock George Sturgis John Hall Wheelock David J. Dowd Jr. George Sturgis John Hall Wheelock John Hall Wheelock George Sturgis John Hall Wheelock Benjamin De Casseres Constable and Co. Ltd. Milton Karl Munitz Daniel MacGhie Cory Charles Augustus Strong Otto Kyllmann George Sturgis Charles P. Davis George Sturgis Llewelyn Powys Robert Shaw Barlow Daniel MacGhie Cory George Sturgis Daniel MacGhie Cory Horace Meyer Kallen John Hall Wheelock John Hall Wheelock Daniel MacGhie Cory Charles Augustus Strong Charles Augustus Strong Benjamin P. Schwartz George Sturgis George Sturgis Daniel MacGhie Cory Charles Scribner’s Sons
List of Letters 13 October 1936 19 October 1936 25 October 1936 28 October 1936 30 October 1936 1 November 1936 2 November 1936 3 November 1936 5 November 1936 12 November 1936 15 November 1936 21 November 1936 25 November 1936 25 November 1936 28 November 1936 28 November 1936 29 November 1936 29 November 1936 30 November 1936 4 December 1936 10 December 1936 12 December 1936 12 December 1936 13 December 1936 14 December 1936 14 December 1936 15 December 1936 16 December 1936 18 December 1936 23 December 1936 26 December 1936 27 December 1936 28 December 1936 28 December 1936 29 December 1936
John Hall Wheelock George Sturgis Daniel MacGhie Cory Andrew Joseph Onderdonk George Sturgis George Sturgis Victor Francis Calverton Robert Shaw Barlow John Hall Wheelock Charles Augustus Strong Daniel MacGhie Cory Christopher George Janus Daniel MacGhie Cory John Hall Wheelock Max Forrester Eastman Morton Dauwen Zabel Charles Davis Abbott John Hall Wheelock Benjamin P. Schwartz John Hall Wheelock Daniel MacGhie Cory George Sturgis John Hall Wheelock George Sturgis Laetitia Bolton Bonamy Dobrée John Hall Wheelock Charles Augustus Strong Cyril Coniston Clemens Charles Augustus Strong Daniel MacGhie Cory Daniel MacGhie Cory Rosamond and George Sturgis John Hall Wheelock Daniel MacGhie Cory
lxxvii
Letters: 1933—1936
To Otto Kyllmann 6 January 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Jan. 6, 1933 Dear Mr. Kyllmann1 Are there any copies left of the large white edition of my “Poems”?2 If so, would you kindly have two copies sent to me here, and charged to my account? If there are none of the large-paper edition, please order two of the ordinary issue. Some time ago I wrote you that before the end of 1932 I hoped to have a new volume of some kind to submit to you, but the fates have willed otherwise. I was inveigled in to devote/ ing the greater part of last year to com^ ^ posing two addresses—to which supplementary notes of some length were to be added—in commemoration of Spinoza3 and Locke4, both born in 1632. The addresses5 together would have made a little volume which I hoped you would publish; but my Siamese twins have been cut apart. Each is to appear under the auspices of the society before which the lecture was delivered; and I have nothing left for the moment to offer you. I am very sorry, as this disperses my work still more, and makes it harder for those interested to collect my writings: but it was a case of moral force majeure,6 and I couldn’t refuse. I hope in future to avoid all such predicaments. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Otto Kyllmann was director of Constable Publishers in London. One hundred copies of the Constable edition of Poems (1923) were printed on large paper and signed by the author. 3 Baruch (or Benedict) Spinoza (1632–77) was a rationalist philosopher of Jewish descent. He was expelled from the synagogue for his unorthodoxy in 1656, and in 1673 he refused the chair of philosophy at Heidelberg because he was unwilling to give up his independence and tranquility. He earned his living by grinding lenses. Spinoza’s philosophy finds its fullest expression in his most famous work, Ethics (1677). Spinoza maintains one cannot understand the world without understanding it as a whole, a single system that has two names, God and Nature. Together with Plato and Aristotle, Spinoza is one of the chief sources of Santayana’s philosophic inspiration. At the time of his graduation, Santayana published his essay “The Ethical Doctrine of Spinoza” in The Harvard Monthly 2 ( June 1886): 144–52. See Persons, 233–36. 2
5:4
The Letters of George Santayana
4
John Locke (1632–1704) founded British empiricism. His empiricism was expanded by Berkeley and Hume, and men of the Enlightenment regarded him as the prophet of reason. 5 “Ultimate Religion” in Septimana Spinozana: acta conventus oecumenici in memoriam Benedicti de Spinoza diei natalis trecentesimi Hagae Comitis habiti: curis Societatis Spinozanae edita (Hagae Comitis: Martinus Nijhoff, 1933): 105–15. Reprinted in Obiter Scripta, 280–97; the Triton Edition, vol. 10, 245–57; and Philosophy of Santayana, 572–86. Santayana’s lecture “Locke and the Frontiers of Common Sense” (which became Part I of Turns ) was presented before the Royal Society of Literature in Bloomsbury Square in London on 19 October 1932. 6 Irresistible force (French).
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 9 January 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Jan. 9, 1933 Dear Cory1 The long letter that you announced a month ago has never come; I infer that you are happy in London, even in the holidays. Valli2 has been ill and has returned to Rome for six months to study Latin and Greek, in hopes of passing examinations for an officer’s college. He is now a sargeant, but not in uniform. We have resumed our weekly conversations,/. — but I find my Italian worse than it used to be. You can’t improve an old man. The Spinoza book is not yet out, but is promised for this month. I won’t send you a copy, as most of it will be in German. Mrs. Van Meter Ames, wife of a young prof. of phil. in Cincinnati,3 has sent me an account of my conversations with them at lunch at the Castello dei Cesari and elsewhere: a sort of Boswell to this Johnson.4 It makes me out rather like a red-faced old Major in Bath spluttering his damn-mes and don’t-you-knows about things in general: but I have no objection, and have only corrected the English which good innocent Mrs. Ames imagines that I speak. I have received, from an objectionable friend in Boston, an objectionable book by Bernard Shaw, called A Black Girl in Search of a God.5 There are amusing turns, but as a whole it is trash. Do you care to have it? The novel is advancing slowly but solidly. I feel that I have solved the greatest difficulty in the earlier part, viz., the yacht episodes. Miss Tindall6
1933–1936
5:5
is making two copies, and I could send you one if you cared to have it. I suspect that you are now absorbed in other things and would rather not be bothered with The Last Puritan until some future time when the coast is clear and you can devote your mind to it for a while, with more of it lying at once before you so that you can see the design. I feel greatly encouraged in my own mind, and have hopes of really finishing it. I have rewritten a few pages of the Prologue, making more marked the difference between my talk and Mario’s.7 This was one of Strong’s8 objections, which I thought well [across ] grounded. Fas est ab hoste doceri.9 Yours affly G.S. 1
Daniel MacGhie Cory (1904–72) attended Columbia University, where he became interested in Santayana’s philosophy. The two men met in 1927, and Cory served as an occasional secretary to Santayana and C. A. Strong. Cory was destined to become Santayana’s closest friend in his later years. 2 Achille Valli, a young friend of Cory and Santayana. [D. C.] 3 Betty Breneman Ames (d. 2002) was the wife of Van Meter Ames (1898–1985), who became chairman of the University of Cincinnati’s philosophy department. His writings include Proust and Santayana; the Aesthetic Way of Life (New York: Russell & Russell, 1937) and Zen and American Thought (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,1962), which includes “Santayana and Detachment” (chapter XII, 182–213). 4 James Boswell (1740–95), a British biographer, wrote The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791), which notes minutely all the doings and sayings of this prominent literary figure of the late eighteenth century. Samuel Johnson (1709–84), a prolific author, is known as a biographer (The Lives of the English Poets [1779–81]), political essayist, and literary critic. He published the first dictionary of the English language in 1755. 5 George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Irish-born playright and author, wrote over fifty plays and novels, as well as shorter fictions including The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God (London: Constable, 1932). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925. 6 Evelyn Tindall, an Englishwoman, served as secretary for the British Legation to the Holy See in Rome. Beginning with Puritan, she typed Santayana’s manuscripts for nearly twenty years. 7 Mario Van de Weyer, a leading character in Puritan, is a composite of several young men whom Santayana had known. 8 Charles Augustus Strong (1862–1940), an American philosopher and psychologist, was Santayana’s longtime friend from Harvard. They lived together off and on for many years. From 1887 to 1889 Strong taught philosophy part-time at Cornell University. Later he taught psychology at the University of Chicago and at Columbia University (see Persons, 239–42). 9 Ipse docet quid agam; fas est et ab hoste doceri. He himself teaches what I should do; it is proper to be taught by the enemy. (Ovid’s Remedia Amoris, 16.iv.428)
5:6
The Letters of George Santayana
To Charles Augustus Strong 15 January 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Rome, Sunday, 15•I•’33 Dear Strong I am glad to hear from you and to know that you are well and thoroughly amusing yourself with the Muses. I too have kept fit enough, with the advantage of not being cold; for though we have had rather less sunshine than usual, it has been mild. And my only contact with the Muses has been to go last week to hear Orfeo1—beautifully staged and played—at the Opera; but the voices seem to lack the purity and passion appropriate to the old music. I am going this afternoon to hear Verdi’s Macbeth,2 and expect to be deafened: because the contemporary idea of strength is violence. Your articles have not yet arrived, but I need hardly say that I shall study them with interest. Have you seen I. A. Richards’ Mencius on the Mind?3 It occurred to me in reading it that his method of “multiple definition”—or assemblage, without parti pris,4 of all the conceptions suggested to different minds by the same words—might help to clarify our controversies about perception. Perhaps, if each recognized the idea entertained by other persons, the quarrel about which idea ought to monopolize the word used—say “perception” or “consciousness”—might seem less important. I have also read “A Sceptical Examination of Contemporary British Philosophy by Adrian Coates, a pupil of Moore’s.5 It has good points. Also (sent to me by a misguided friend) Bernard Shaw’s “Black Girl in Quest of a God”. The Spinoza book is not yet out: I will have a copy sent you when I have seen it. The Locke lecture, with extensive notes, is to be published in a book, with other recent articles of mine, by the Royal Society of Literature. Thus my plan of issuing the two [across ] addresses together has fallen through. But I hope somehow, in time, to rescue the Spinoza and republish it. Yours ever G.S. 1
La Favola d’Orfeo, the first opera by Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643), is based on the myth of Orpheus. With a libretto by Alessandro Striggio, the opera was first performed in 1607 in Mantua. 2 The opera by Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901), based on Shakespeare’s tragedy with a libretto written by Francesco Maria Piave, was first performed in Florence in 1847.
1933–1936
5:7
3 I[vor] A[rmstrong] Richards (1893–1979) wrote Mencius on the Mind: Experiments in Multiple Definition (London, 1932), a comparative philosophy work centering on Mencius, a Chinese philosopher and disciple of Confucius. Interested in Oriental literature, Richards taught at Cambridge University. His other books include Basic Rules of Reason and Principles of Literary Criticism. 4 Bias, prejudice (French). 5 Coates wrote A Sceptical Examination of Contemporary British Philosophy (London: Brentano’s Ltd., 1929). George Edward Moore (1873–1958), a proponent of common sense, wrote Principia Ethica (Cambridge University Press, 1903). He began editing the journal Mind in 1921, and was elected to a professorship of philosophy at Cambridge University in 1925. After his retirement from that post in 1939, he visited the United States, serving as visiting professor at various colleges and universities, including Smith, Princeton, and Columbia.
To Charles Augustus Strong 18 January 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Jan. 18, 1933 Dear Strong I am sorry about Miller, and have sent him a cheque, trying to put the matter so that he may not feel humiliated.1 I thought he had a little something to live on. Has it evaporated in the crisis? Probably you know that Cory is in bed with the influenza, and a rather high fever. Boylston Beal,2 who is here at the Palace Hotel, alone with his manservant, has also been laid up for weeks with the same scourge. I have now read your article. A part of your criticism I am afraid will miss the mark, because Lovejoy3 will say that you are imposing your categories on his arguments, instead of accepting or criticising his own principles. But you do the latter effectively, in my opinion, when you point out that the concept of existential relations is not a self-transcend ing ^ ^ cognition. All ideas are concepts of existential relations: that is, the relation of the parts of the picture to one another would be existential relations if they/ picture and its parts were substantial objects,/ . [illegible ] ^ ^ ^^ ure— and — its — parts pict— — I was also interested in your discrimination between thin and thick existence: i.e. between appearances and substances. Even in an appearance, I should say, there is a concomitant existence involved, or rather two: one substantial, that of the psyche, and another spiritual, that of the intuition. But the thin existence of the appearance itself seems to be only
5:8
The Letters of George Santayana
imputed, because the appearance is regarded by the hasty mind as the intrinsic nature of the psyche at that moment; and then in memory and history, the same appearance is used to describe the phase of spiritual life in which it was present. I think, as I said in my last note, that a “multiple definition” of such terms as “existence” and “datum” might be useful in obviating disputes. The rest of your paper doesn’t seem to add anything to your previous pronouncements. Yours ever G.S. 1
Dickinson Sargeant Miller (1868–1963) studied philosophy at Harvard (A.M., 1892) and earned a Ph.D. (1893) from Germany’s Halle-Wittenberg University. He taught in the Harvard philosophy department from 1899 to 1904. Miller wrote under the name R. E. Hobart. Strong forwarded to Santayana the 14 January 1933 letter from Miller, which reads in part: “A year ago–last February–you wrote that if it came to destitution you would kindly help–I have reached it absolutely, else would not apply. Can you lend me $60. That should tide me over fully, but I shall need all of it. The lectureship stopped owing to bad times.” 2 Boylston Adams Beal (1865–1944) was a member of Santayana’s Harvard class of 1886 and one of his closest friends during the 1890s. Santayana moved into the pension in Berlin kept by an Englishwoman, where Beal was living. This cost Santayana the opportunity to learn to speak German, a language which he read easily but in which he could never converse effectively. See Persons, 226–27 and 260. A Boston lawyer who served as an officer in the American Embassies at Berlin and London, Beal was one of the “pure and intense Bostonians of the old school” (Persons, 224). 3 Arthur Oncken Lovejoy (1873–1962), born in Germany, was an American philosopher and historian of ideas who taught at Johns Hopkins University. In 1912 Santayana recommended Lovejoy for a position in the Harvard philosophy department. A critical realist, his works fall into two main groups—those on epistemology and those on intellectual history. In his major work, The Revolt Against Dualism: An Inquiry Concerning the Existence of Ideas (1930), he defended epistemological dualism against the reigning modes of monism. “Santayana always thought very highly of Lovejoy’s critique of Pragmatism” (Years, 130).
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 19 January 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Jan. 19, 1933 Dear Cory I am sorry your influenza is so persistent. Of course I will gladly see you through any expense it may involve. I have still £800 in the bank,
1933–1936
5:9
but don’t spend it all, else there will be nothing left for you next year. My yearly account from America has not yet arrived, but I have reason to think it will not be very alarming. Strong knows that you are laid up, because I mentioned it in one of the letters we have been exchanging during the last few days, apropos of his last article in the J. of Phil.1 and Miller. Miller’s lectureship in London has been suppressed, and Strong fears he may starve himself to death. If you care to see him, very likely he would be glad to come and see you—to visit the sick, according to the catechism is one of the corporal acts of mercy— his address is C/o Thomas Cook & Son,2 Berkeley Street, W.1. I hope this may find you well again. Yours affly G.S. 1
Journal of Philosophy. Thomas Cook started a rail travel business in London in the mid-1800s. He also invented a system of “travellers’ cheques” which developed into a banking service. 2
To George Sturgis 25 January 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Jan. 25, 1933 Dear George1 My yearly account is, above all, reassuring. I expected a depreciation in values, but didn’t know how great it would be. As things stand, I am still spending less than half of my income; and even a considerable further reduction wouldn’t affect my way of living. That is all that concerns me personally for the present, so that I have every reason to be satisfied practically: and theoretically my impression is that you have managed things admirably, and I am pleased to see that you have put largish sums into U.S. bonds, which I suppose are not likely to evaporate. My letter of credit is good until March 31st— and I shall then have about $1000 in cash; so that the new letter of credit—which might be again for $5000—will not be wanted until May. If I get it before I leave Rome for the summer, about June 1st—, it will be in time. My only weak spot financially is my London bank account which has sunk to one half what it used to be, without counting the depreciation of sterling. During the last two or three years my earned income has been small, as I have had no important new book published, and the sale of the old ones, though continuous, has not been large. I have also written few
5:10
The Letters of George Santayana
if any articles of the sort which are paid for. On the other hand, new ^ ^ books, presents, and charities, which I pay for by cheque on B. S. & C–o 2 have multiplied. Several persons in Spain, whom your aunts used to protect, write to me that those sainted ladies in heaven will bless me if I continue their good works; these blessings are due once or twice a year; and then there is Cory who is now supposed to be Strong’s secretary, but whom I feel responsible for also, and who has to be helped when he is ill (as at present with the influenza in London) or when he is in love—love is expensive in all its forms—or needs a new overcoat. And older and more serious people are sometimes in need of a helping hand. Just now I have learned that my old colleague in the Harvard Philosophical Department, D. S. Miller, is destitute and in danger of starving himself to death through too great economy. All these things deplete my bank account, and I may have to ask you later—I still have £800 to my credit—for an extra draft to replenish it. It is good news that you mean to come in May to Italy. Probably I shall go in June to Cortina and it wouldn’t be hard [across ] to arrange a meeting—say at Verona, if you go so far east. Yours affly GSantayana 1
George Sturgis (1891–1944) was the son of Santayana’s half brother, Robert Shaw Sturgis (1854–1921), and his wife Ellen. George Sturgis became an investments counselor and followed in his father’s footsteps as business manager for the family. He married Rosamond Thomas Bennett (d. 1976) in 1921, and they had three sons: Robert Shaw (b. 1922), Neville (1923–89), and Nathaniel Russell Sturgis (b. 1925). George was divorced from Rosamond in 1944 and remarried and died that same year. 2 Brown Shipley and Company was Santayana’s London bank which he used as a permanent address.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 5 February 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 5, 1933 Dear Cory It is an achievement to have finished this article and got it published.1 A great deal more than appears in it has really passed through your mind in these three years; in fact, there is something scattered and self-interrupted about it, as if you had too many “initial data” for your “subjective form”.2 As a composition and an argument, your essay would have been better, perhaps, if it had come out of you in one jet, and you hadn’t been
1933–1936
5:11
harassed by so many criticisms and incidental requirements. But never mind. It is agreed that this is merely your habilitation, and that your spontaneous performances will come later. As to the matter of your criticism, of course I agree with it all: perhaps I felt on a first reading that you had indulged in a little bad temper in note 25, where you say you “do not relish any ‘movement’ of thought that leads to” scepticism: but as you condemn Whitehead3 for his neo-realism (which comes from not having carried this movement out seriously: and it is a vast movement from common sense to the transcendental point of view) and as you end by accepting the result of that movement, I conclude that your disrelish for it was only momentary. Apart from my own views, however, I think your criticism suffers from not having Bergson sufficiently in mind.4 Bergson would be the key to the need of “elimination”, since all reality is a set of vibrating images, and memory and perception would by right embrace the whole universe, up to the present instant, if the presence of most of it were not somehow cut off,—by the screen of the brain and sense-organs and the (inexplicable) need of intelligent action. On the other hand, if you had brought in Bergson more largely, the absurdity of the whole attempt to make “experience” the sole reality would have become more palpable, and your paper would not have been so sympathetic or close to your author as it is. You haven’t said whether you would like Coates’ or Richard’s books. I am sending you a more frivolous one, given [across] me on account of the motto at the beginning. I haven’t read it myself.—Cheque will follow in a week. Yours affly G.S. 1
“Dr. Whitehead on Perception,” Philosophy 30 (19 January 1933): 29–43. “This is a play on two terms in Whitehead’s terminology” (Years, 107). 3 Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) was an English philosopher and mathematician. His Science and the Modern World (1925), a history of the development of science, explains his idealistic, mystical philosophy. He wrote other books, as well as coauthoring (with Bertrand Russell) Principia Mathematica (1910–13). 4 Henri Bergson (1859–1941), a French philosopher, taught at the Collège de France. His philosophy is complex, but the basic premise of his intellectual system is a faith in direct intuition as a means of attaining knowledge. 2
5:12
The Letters of George Santayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 12 February 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Rome, — Jan February 12, ’33
Dear Cory Here is your cheque. I am too busy this morning rewriting a favourite passage of the novel to do more than say how-do-you-do. I hope you are not depressed: and as to the assininity of Ross,1 what does it matter if you can see Plato between his ears? G.S. 1
William David Ross (b. 1877), a British Aristotelian scholar and moral philosopher, was prominent in academic and public life. He was the leading opponent of the view that the Socrates of Plato’s dialogues is never a mouthpiece for Plato’s own doctrines. He rejected the contention that the theory of Ideas was originally the work of Socrates and not of Plato. His main contribution to philosophy is in the field of ethics. In The Right and the Good (Oxford, 1930) he argued the case for intuitionism.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 6 March 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Rome March 6th 1933
Dear Cory Here is your cheque, only a few days in anticipation of the normal date. Sorry you have been short; you ought to have enough strength of mind to maintain a little reserve for such moments of forgetfulness on S.’s part. I would gladly supply such a nest-egg if I thought you would sit on it. I have had an attack of my bronchial catarrh, and have been ten days without leaving my rooms; am almost well again, but this time, though not severe, the trouble has been unusually persistent. Dr. Green1 is agreeable, but not very energetic. True, the weather has not been favourable The cough has not prevented me from going on reading and writing much as usual. They inform me from the Hague that the Spinoza book will appear in the Spring! Yours affectionately G.S. 1
Unidentified.
1933–1936
To George Sturgis 7 March 1933 • Rome, Italy
5:13
(MS: Houghton) Hotel Bristol Rome March 7th 1933
Dear George I have your letter of Feb. 21st in which you speak of your trip. I don’t know the routes in northern Italy, but I believe there are some new speeding roads, and I daresay all the chief routes are good, as far as the roads are concerned. Your porter at the hotel in San Remo can inform you better than I about all that. If you also care about scenery, I should think the best plan would be to make directly for the Lakes, and cross from one to another over the intervening hills. If, on the other hand, you care more for towns, it would be better to remain south of the Po: Parma is a place ^ ^ I should myself make for, as there is a wonderful cathedral which I have never seen.1 As to dates, and the possibility of my meeting you, it depends a little on circumstances. Normally I shouldn’t leave Rome before June; the th Hotel Miramonti at Cortina I believe is not open before June 15– and, apart from seeing you, I have no particular reason for wishing to stop on the way. Make your plans quite independently and let me know what they are; and if I can manage it I will cut across your path somewhere. The “Harvard Fund Council” is always dunning me for a subscription. I see you have contributed, so that you probably understand what the necessity for these appeals is, and why one should heed them. Evidently, I an old bachelor and trebly a Harvard man,2 ought to join in, if that is the thing to do. The sense of so many millions flying about like aeroplanes rather has given me the impression that the rank and file couldn’t do much to help. But I am willing to do my bit. Please send them— Harvard Fund Council, Wadsworth House, Cambridge, Mass—$100 from me—unless in view of the fact that this gift will have to be repeated annually, you think it more prudent to send only $50. I leave it to you. I received a telegram from Luis Sastre3 today saying his wife Teresa was dead. She leaves five small children. Too bad. Yours affly G. S. 1 The Po is the longest river of Italy and forms the widest and most fertile valley in Italy. Its chief tributaries are from the Alps. The north central city of Parma (noted for
5:14
The Letters of George Santayana
Parmesan cheese) is rich in the works of Correggio, which include frescoes in the Romanesque cathedral. Another notable building is the baptistery (13th century). 2 Santayana held three degrees from Harvard: A.B. (1886), M.A., and Ph.D. (1889). 3 Luis Sastre González (d. 1937) was one of four sons from Celedonio Sastre’s first marriage. (Celedonio was later married to Santayana’s half sister Susana). Luis was married to Teresa Fernández de Soto.
To Charles Scribner Jr. 19 March 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, March 19, 1933. Dear Mr. Scribner1 I am much pleased to know that you have arranged for the American edition of my “Turns of Thought”. A royalty of 10% will be ample: you know that I don’t expect to make money out of my writings: what I earn is welcome, but I abstract from that consideration in arranging my work. You will be doing me the most welcome service by making the price of this book as low as possible. It is an unintended book, and a mere scrapheap; but it contains some criticism of Anglo-Saxon ways of thinking which it may interest a part of the public to have pointed out and described, as it were, from a little distance. I had meant to publish the Locke lecture together with my Spinoza lecture of last year at The Hague: but the Spinoza Society has claimed the latter, as the Royal Society of Literature has claimed the former: hence this volume of essays on the one hand, and on the other, my much meditated Spinoza paper about to appear in a polyglot volume issued by Martinus Nijhoff at The Hague. Such scattering of my work is contrary to my wish; but we are living already, willy-nilly, under a socialistic civilization, and can no longer call our work our own. As to my “novel”—it is hardly a novel in the current sense of the word— I am devoting myself at present to making a final revision of it and having it typed, so as to be quite ready for publication eventually: and about one half is now complete. But this doesn’t mean that it will soon be in your hands. There are powerful reasons for not issuing it during my life^^ time, not so much on my own account as on account of offense which some good friends of mine, still living, my take at it. I mean to leave it to my friend and secretary Mr. Daniel Cory, who understands the spirit in
1933–1936
5:15
which it is conceived, and will see about publishing it at the right moment. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Charles Scribner Jr. (1854–1930) served as president of Charles Scribner’s Sons from 1879 to 1928 and then was chairman of the board. Charles Scribner’s Sons published the marjority of Santayana’s works in America
To Charles Augustus Strong 28 March 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, Rome March 28, 1933 Dear Strong I shall be glad to see you during the days following April 15th and without being “butted into” in the least, I can come to lunch at the Aragno as usual; but I won’t ordinarily go for a drive. I have had an attack of my bronchial cough and was kept in doors for a week or two: it was not severe, and with something to spit into at my side, I could read and write much as usual. I am now well again, but not very active. th I suppose you have considered that April 16– is Easter and that this is 1 an Anno Santo. I have read in the papers—it may be mere advertising or propaganda—that all hotels will be full, and the Minerva, being somewhat clerical, may be especially crowded. The Princes’ Hotel, which I had sometimes thought you might like, is now closed: but Boylston Beal has been most of the winter at the Palace (which now has annexed the Ambassadors’) and that seems to be now the place most approved of. There are no steps at the door (the old one) and the lift is spacious. Also it is too expensive for most pilgrims. I mention it, in case you should find any difficulty in getting rooms. I have heard of Sellar’s2 book, but have not read it. His article in “Critical Realism” seemed to me nearer to my own position than perhaps any other in that book: but I hated the way it was written, and had the greatest difficulty in reading it through; and I found the same indigestible quality in something subsequent of his which I once looked into. No doubt this book is better composed—especially at the beginning. Almost all American books seem beautifully written for the first ten pages, but then nature reasserts itself. Besides, I am not attempting to think out the
5:16
The Letters of George Santayana
details of these matters afresh: I suspect we are using literary or geomet^ rical categories for unimagined natural processes. ^ Yours ever G.S. 1
Holy year (Italian). Roy Wood Sellars (1880–1973) taught philosophy at the University of Michigan. His books include The Philosophy of Physical Realism, published in 1932, and he was a major contributor to the composition of the Humanist Manifesto of 1933. Sellars and Santayana both contributed to Essays in Critical Realism (edited by Durant Drake [Macmillan, 1920]). 2
To Logan Pearsall Smith 6 April 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Congress)
Hotel Bristol Rome April 6, 1933 Dear Smith1 How nice to hear from you, and how nice to expect your impressions on rereading Shakespeare. I can understand how the anthology2 might grow out of such a fresh reading. When I got my monumental Edition last year and began at vol. I, I formed the project of marking with the very finest and most eraceable of pencil-lines the passages that seemed to me poetical in the magical sense: but I soon abandoned the attempt, because these passages were impossible to divorce from their context, or to distinguish consistently from the other striking lines that were witty or wise or eloquent. I gather that your anthology will be copious, so that you can include all the really good things of any sort, since you intend to choose twelve or fifteen sonnets. I won’t attempt to say which twelve or fifteen I like best. The older I grow the less my taste is comparative; and the sonnets I used to turn to instinctively in the days when we read poetry in my Harvard quarters were the stand-byes that you would think of in any case. The Spinoza book which is to contain my Hague address (which is hardly about Spinoza) is not yet out, but certainly you shall have a copy as soon as it appears. It was first promised for Se ptem Nov. 29th the exact —— anniversary of Spinoza’s birth—then it was postponed to December—now until “the Spring.” As there are many contributors in various languages it is no marvel that there should be delays. I will also send you my Locke lecture, which will soon appear in a little volume called “Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy.”
1933–1936
Love to the genial denizens of I Tatti3 from
5:17
yours ever GSantayana
1 Born into a wealthy Quaker family, Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) was educated at Haverford College and Harvard University. After working in the family glass manufacturing business, he went to England and entered Balliol College, Oxford University (B.A., 1893; M.A., 1906). He remained in England, where he took up a literary career. Smith’s sister Alys was Bertrand Russell’s first wife, and his sister Mary married Bernard Berenson. Robert Gathorne-Hardy’s Recollections of Logan Pearsall Smith describes the decline into insanity that occurred in his later years. 2 On Reading Shakespeare (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.; London: Constable, 1933). 3 I Tatti was the villa of Bernard and Mary Berenson at Settignano, near Florence. The villa now serves as the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.
To Henry Ward Abbot 10 April 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome April 10, 1933 Dear Harry1 No, I am not dead yet, but the Spinoza book isn’t yet out: at least, I haven’t seen it. Most of it will be in German: nevertheless I will have a copy sent you as for the present there will be no other means of getting at my Hague paper. I should be glad if Scribner secured from Nijhoff the right to reprint in America: out of respect for the occasion I didn’t like to reserve that right myself Yours sincerely G.S. 1
Henry Ward Abbot (b. 1862) was a member of Santayana’s Harvard class of 1886.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 10 April 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Rome, April 10, 1933 Dear Cory In lieu of reading Sellars I have been looking over Whitehead’s new book—The Adventures of Ideas1—a rather American—and Deweyish title.2 A man named Nelson Smith,3 who lives in Cambridge, Mass. and is an
5:18
The Letters of George Santayana
amateur philosopher, left the book for me to read, but I must return it, so that if you want the thing (which at present perhaps you don’t) I will have it sent to you directly. I don’t think it will add to Whitehead’s reputation for soundness; but I have gathered one or two points from it more clearly than from his previous arguments. I agree with him about the “disastrous” mistake of supposing that the clearer and more human our ideas are the better they must define “reality”; and also (if we take the word “enjoyment” figuratively) that reality must enjoy itself at each point, and not be merely a projection, like a ghost, of our private experience. But this merely repeats, in a psychological metaphor, the ordinary definition of substance, that it is that which exists in itself. Logan Pearsall Smith has sent me some sugared hay of his own about “Reading Shakespeare”. It is pleasantly written, except where he feels impelled to speak in hushed superlatives about Shakespeare, as if he were speaking about God. The need of possessing the biggest poet in the world puffs him out; and there is over-interpretation in the wake of Coleridge and Lamb; but he mentions a naughty American professor Elmer Edgar Stoll who seems to have seen light by the Mississippi, and goes to the other extreme.4 Part II (18 chapters) of the novel is now finished and typed, and I am busy revising the beginning of Part III in which your friend Mario makes his appearance, aged 16. I am beginning to feel encouraged about finishing this endless task. It is not as clever and amusing as I meant to make it, but it turns out deeper and more consistent than I had suspected. There is a hidden tragic structure in it which was hardly foreseen but belongs to the essence of the subject, the epoch, and the dissolution of Protestantism. th for a week as usual. I suppose Strong is coming to Rome on April 18– he will tell me whether he expects you to come to Italy this year, or perhaps to see you in France. I expect myself to go to Cortina. Yours affly G.S. 1
Published in New York by Macmillan, 1933. John Dewey (1859–1952) was an American philosopher and educator long associated with Columbia University. His philosophy (instrumentalism) is related to pragmatism. In education he argued for learning by experience, motivated by the student’s need. His review of Common Sense and Society was published in Science (9 February 1906): 223–25. 3 Unidentified. See 14 July 1933 to Cory. 4 Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), an English romantic poet, critic, and philosopher, lectured notably on Shakespeare. Charles Lamb (1775–1834), an English essayist and boyhood friend of Coleridge, established a reputation as a critic. Since 1934 marked the 100th anniversary of both Coleridge and Lamb’s deaths, many works, by 2
1933–1936
5:19
or about them, were being published during the early 1930s. Elmer Edgar Stoll (1874–1959), a University of Minnesota professor and Shakespeare scholar, wrote Poets and Playwrights: Shakespeare, Jonson, Spenser, Milton and Art and Artifice in Shakespeare: A Study in Dramatic Contrast and Illusion.
To Logan Pearsall Smith 12 April 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Congress)
Hotel Bristol, Rome April 12, 1933 Dear Smith The end of your book on reading Shakespeare has set my mind going furiously and before the ferment dies down I must send a wave radiating in your direction, by way of thanks. But first, putting all civility aside as unworthy of the occasion, let me confess that I don’t like or agree with everything you say: you seem to me to over-disparage and to over-praise Shakespeare, and to talk of mysteries and problems where they don’t exist. Of course no author, no child, no earthquake can be fully explained by general “laws”, and an element of happy or unhappy chance, or conjunction of accidental circumstances, mingles with everything that we do or say. Shakespeare happened to have a great fluid imagination and an enormous eloquence or gift of storing and mating and pouring out words. These natural powers—which many a man has here and there—happened in his case to be set free, fed, and loosened by the circumstances of the age and by his special craft as an actor and playwright. Most other poets have been held down by tradition or religion or lack of opportunity to a single mode of expression, to one literary key. They were not allowed to mix poetry with prose, tragedy with comedy, love-making with politics, or edification with atheism. The top wave of the renaissance allowed Shakespeare to combine all these elements: and the wealth of Christendom and of paganism were at his disposal, without the restraints or limitations of either. Nevertheless his medium did limit him somewhat: he might have run over otherwise into the preserves of Rabelais, Cervantes, or Pietro Aretino.1 Exuberance seems to me to cover everything, the wealth of genius as well as the contempt for art; and in particular it covers the irrelevant elaboration of language and of characters which, to us, is one of Shakespeare’s chief charms: those glimpses that he stops to give us of the back-waters and eddies and weeds of the stream of passion.
5:20
The Letters of George Santayana
He challenged and perhaps annoyed his public by doing so; but he just could manage it without being dismissed as a closet-tragedian; and these escapades of his imagination into the by-conscious now seem to us a proof of miraculous depth in him. I don’t think they are that: but they are proofs of his knowingness and quick intuition. And this brings me back to your conclusion about his philosophy—that life is a dream. Yes, that is his philosophy; and, when T. S. Eliot says that this philosophy (borrowed he thinks from Seneca2) is an inferior one, compared with Dante’s, I agree if you mean inferior morally and imaginatively: but it happens to be the true philosophy for the human passions, and for a man enduring, without supernaturally interpreting, the spectacle of the universe. It is a commonplace philosophy, the old old heathen philosophy of mankind. Shakespeare [across] didn’t create it. He felt it was true, and never thought of transcending it. Yours sincerely G.Santayana 1
François Rabelais (c. 1490–1553) was the French author of the satirical romances Gargantua and Pantagruel. A Benedictine monk and teacher of medicine, Rabelais wrote the first two books of his history of the giant Gargantua and his son Pantagruel from 1532 to 1534. The third and fourth books followed in 1546–52. There is a fifth book of dubious authenticity. The work is a satire against the vulgarity and abuses of society delivered in burlesque humor that often conceals his serious discussions of education, politics, and philosophy. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616) was a Spanish novelist, dramatist, and poet. His reputation as a great writer rests almost entirely on Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605) and the twelve short stories known as the Novelas Ejemplares (1613), even though his literary output was extraordinary. Pietro Aretino (1492–1556) was an Italian satirist and adventurer who wrote for hire. He aimed his satire at powerful men but primarily at social customs and literary pretentions. His best-known work is the comedy La cortigiana (The courtier, 1525). 2 T[homas] S[tearns] Eliot (1888–1965), an American-born poet, dramatist, and critic, became a British subject in 1927. He was awarded the 1948 Nobel Prize for literature for his contribution to poetry. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 3 B.C.–A.D. 65) was a Roman Stoic philosopher and playwright who was born in Spain. His extant works include nine tragedies. He saw philosophy as a therapeutic enterprise, designed for moral edification.
1933–1936
To Sidney Hook 15 April 1933 • Rome, Italy C
5:21
(MS: Southern)
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London Rome, April 15, 1933 Dear Mr. Hook1 Your Marx2—for which I am much obliged—has helped me to understand why years ago, in attempting to read Das Kapital,3 I was stopped short at the theory of value, and dropped the thing as hopeless. It was not meant, you explain, to describe the facts, but to preach an ideal: things ought to be valued and paid for according to the labour they have cost. I know these are not your words, but I have boiled it down to that for my own consumption. And that—though morally and politically it is far from my own feeling—reconciles me to Marx theoretically: which is very satisfactory, because I otherwise entirely agree with him in his historical materialism—though mine is not “dialectical” but common or garden materialism—and also with his low opinion of capitalism. However, here, as in the theory of value, it seems to me that we must regard the position given to the subject, as well as the animus of the discussion, as dictated entirely by a political purpose. Marx wants to overthrow capitalism, and simply turns all the batteries of his learning and zeal upon it for that object. In other words, he writes to produce passion. To my own mind, absurd as capitalism is—I live on invisible and unearned money myself, I don’t know why or how—it seems to be only a technical device accompanying industrialism: and the latter is the radical evil. I wish some day you would write another book to show that the whole notion of man producing things is grotesquely superficial: man only “improves” land, cattle, poultry, fruit, and crops; nature alone produces; and the things man constructs, like houses and clothes and ships, are produced by nature through man, who is an integral part of nature. Isn’t this simply economic materialism? And the value of all these things lies entirely in their uses, and not ^ ^ at all in the labour which may be required to make them available. This labour in fact subtracts from their value, in so far as it is forced labour: and this is the crying sin of our industrialism: that it forces millions of men to labour hopelessly in order to supply themselves—or the capitalists among them—with a lot of rubbish. You Deweyfy Marx a good deal: wouldn’t it be better to Marxify Dewey? In respect to the material basis of all life Marx and even Engels4
5:22
The Letters of George Santayana
(though he hedges a little in the last letter, which you quote at the very end) seem to me much clearer and more honest than Dewey, Kallen, & Co 5 Of course the ideal and conscious phases of human life and action count in the world: but they count because they are also material, and through their material organs. Does any of you seriously believe that a disembodied angel could invent or run a machine or even sing an opera? And this leads me to say what I had intended to begin with: that I turned at first with some trepidation, knowing your pragmatic associations, to your section on truth: and much to my relief and delight, after a few phrases at the beginning that had a slight flavour of heresy, I found everything straight and clear and free from that fanatical ardour in not seeing the obvious which characterizes so much of what is written on this subject. Richards too, in his Mind of Mencius, seems to have got out of the wood With many thanks and good wishes, Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Sidney Hook (1902–89) was introduced to Santayana’s writings by Morris R. Cohen, in whose course at the City College of New York Reason was read. Hook studied Santayana’s works while pursuing graduate studies at Columbia University, where there existed during the 1920s “a veritable Santayana cult,” led by Dean F. J. E. Woodbridge. Hook taught at New York University (1927–68), and in 1973 he became Senior Resident Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. 2 Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx (New York: John Day Publishers, 1933). 3 Karl Marx (1818–83), a German social philosopher and radical leader, became the chief theorist of modern socialism. Most modern forms of socialism and capitalism are derived from his dynamic theory of social change. He adapted Hegel’s dialectical method to his own materialistic position to produce the theory of dialectical materialism. His monumental work is Das Kapital. 4 Friedrich Engels (1820–95) was the creator of orthodox Marxism as a system based on historical materialism and on dialectics. With Marx, he wrote the Communist Manifesto. Engels emphasized the scientific, positivist component in their joint theories. In his Dialectics of Nature (1925) Engels extended materialist dialectics to the natural sciences, with results that are often held to be ludicrous, and implied that dialectics would supersede formal logic. 5 Born in Germany, Horace Meyer Kallen (1882–1974) attended Harvard (A.B., 1903; Ph.D., 1908) and taught English at Princeton (1903–5). From 1908 to 1911 he taught philosophy at Harvard and worked closely with both William James and Santayana. Later he taught at the University of Wisconsin and Columbia. Kallen was one of the founders of the New School for Social Research in New York City. A leading Zionist, he wrote books on philosophy, politics, and education.
1933–1936
To Charles Augustus Strong [Mid-April? 1933] • [Rome, Italy]
5:23
(MS: Rockefeller)
Dear Strong Here are some miscellaneous books in French—two from the German— in case any of them are new to you. Bush gave me the ones about the Jews in Hungary, which I found interesting.1 I will be at the Aragno tomorrow for lunch, but don’t wait, as I sha’n’t arrive before 1 o’clock. Wm Lyon Phelps and his wife are to be here from Thursday to Monday.2 I shall have to lunch with them on Friday, but otherwise I shall try not to let them interfere with us. Yours ever G.S. 1
Wendell T. Bush (1867–1941) received an M.A. from Harvard (1908) and a Ph.D. from Columbia. He was professor of philosophy at Columbia University and cofounder and editor of The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods. 2 William “Billy” Lyon Phelps (1865–1943) took degrees from Yale (B.A., 1887; Ph.D., 1891) and Harvard (A.M., 1891). A popular teacher (Yale, 1892–1933), he was among the first Americans to specialize in modern literature. Phelps established the first college courses in contemporary drama and the novel and introduced Russian novelists to his students. He wrote “As I Like It,” a book column for Scribner’s Magazine. His Autobiography with Letters was published in 1939. Annabel Hubbard (d. 1939) married Phelps in 1892.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 26 April 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Rome, April 26, 1933 Dear Cory Strong has been—so far—quite gentle and harmless. I think the notice people are taking of his last book1 has restored his tone enormously: he has been asked to write for a new French review Recherches philosophiques2 and he is going to do so in French. He showed me the Times Literary Supplement3 on Sellars, and I now feel as if I had read the book. For the moment I am deep in another American professor, Elmer Edgar Stoll of Minnesota: but he is all that his name doesn’t suggest—very much at home in England and in the English language, also in French,
5:24
The Letters of George Santayana
and a satirical thoroughly sophisticated and disillusion ed critic. The ^ ^ subject is Shakespeare, and I was put on to him by Logan P. Smith. Let us call him that! It sounds like Bér nard George B. Shaw and Burt Rand —— Russell,4 whom I am going to mention in my novel. It is quite all right about the grey clothes, etc. Lucky that I had such a broad margin, because now the exchange has reduced my income by 15%, and I don’t know how much further the process may be carried. However, I think it will not inconvenience me at all in practice I am getting impatient about the non-appearance of my two new publications: but they can’t be delayed much longer. It is very nice that you are happy in England. Strong has said nothing about expecting you. He is still in doubt about Margaret and George and the children coming or not coming this summer to Paris:5 but I think it likely that he will go there in any case, and probably would wish to see you. I suppose you wouldn’t so much mind seeing him in Paris as having to come to Italy. There is a half-formed plan in my head of going to the Riviera in October, with the idea of looking about for a possible place in which to settle, or at least in which to spend the summer in future, if Rome and Cortina should become too exacting for my failing powers. If I went to Monaco, Nice, or Cap d’Antibes, and you were in Paris, perhaps you might make me a visit. I don’t think Strong now would take umbrage. Yours affly G.S. 1
Essays on the Natural Origin of the Mind (1930). A yearbook published in Paris by Boivin & Cie. 3 The Times Literary Supplement, a weekly literary periodical, first appeared with The Times in 1902 and became a separate publication in 1914. Reviews were anonymous until 1974. This influential journal covers the important works of literature and scholarship. 4 Bertrand Arthur William Russell (1872–1970) was educated at Cambridge and held a variety of posts there. He reacted against idealism with realism in Principles of Mathematics (1903). He adopted the alternative of logical constructions, substituting wherever possible constructions out of known entities for inference to unknown ones. Presentation of pure mathematics from logic exemplifies this policy. See his classic Principia Mathematica (co-authored with A. N. Whitehead, 1910–13). Our Knowledge of the External World (1914) applies Russell’s logical constructionism to physical objects. Later Russell became interested in social and political issues, publishing Marriage and Morals (1929), Education and the Social Order (1932), and New Hopes for a Changing World (1951). He received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950. He married four times, and his first wife was Alys Pearsall Smith (1867–1951), the daughter of Hannah Tatum Whitall and Robert Pearsall Smith. They were married from 1894 to 1921. See Persons, 285–89, 439–44, 475–76, and 485–86. 2
1933–1936
5:25
5 Margaret Strong (1897–1985), daughter of Elizabeth Rockefeller and C. A. Strong, married George Cuevas in 1927. Cuevas (1886–1961) later became the Marquis de Piedrablanca de Guana and was known for his work as a ballet impresario. He became an American citizen in 1940. The Cuevas’s had two children survive to adulthood, Elizabeth (b. 1929) and Johnny (b. 1930).
To Iris Cutting Origo [May 1933] • [Rome, Italy]
(MS: Unknown)
[…] We have no claim to any of our possessions.1 We have no claim to exist; and, as we have to die in the end, so we must resign ourselves to die piecemeal, which really happens when we lose somebody or something that was closely intertwined with our existence. It is like a physical wound; we may survive, but maimed and broken in that direction; dead there. Not that we can, or ever do at heart, renounce our affections. Never that. We cannot exercise our full nature all at once in every direction; but the parts that are relatively in abeyance, their centre lying perhaps in the past or the future, belong to us inalienably. We should not be ourselves if we cancelled them. I don’t know how literally you may believe in another world, or whether the idea means very much to you. As you know, I am not myself a believer in the ordinary sense, yet my feeling on this subject is like that of believers, and not at all like that of my fellow-materialists. The reason is that I disagree utterly with that modern philosophy which regards experience as fundamental. Experience is a mere whiff or rumble, produced by enormously complex and ill-deciphered causes of experience; and in the other direction, experience is a mere peephole through which glimpses come down to us of eternal things. These are the only things that, in so far as we are spiritual beings, we can find or can love at all. All our affections, when clear and pure and not claims to possession, transport us to another world; and the loss of contact, here or there, with those eternal beings is merely like closing a book which we keep at hand for another occasion. We know that book by heart. Its verses give life to life. I don’t mean that these abstract considerations ought to console us. Why wish to be consoled? On the contrary, I wish to mourn perpetually the absence of what I love or might love. Isn’t that what religious people call the love of God?
5:26
The Letters of George Santayana
1 Marchesa Iris Margaret Cutting Origo (1902–88), the only child of Bayard and Lady Sybil Cuffe Cutting, was a biographer, historian, and literary critic. She married the Marchese Antonio Origo. They lived on an estate below Siena, called La Foce. These passages are from a letter she received on the occasion of the death of her son.
To Charles Augustus Strong 10 May 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, Rome May 10, 1933. Dear Strong I was sorry to hear of the sad end of the illness of Iris’ little boy. After making one or two false starts, I have finally written her a letter full of sober philosophy. At least it will seem more sympathetic than absolute silence. I have now read Loisy’s little book.1 As you would suppose I agree with him in his criticism of Bergson; but I was disappointed in his own positive position—quite irreligious—to the effect that Humanity is the true God and the League of Nations his holy temple. It is the old French Comtist positivism, and hardly expected after Loisy’s demonstration of insight into Greek mysteries and St. Paul. In contrast, I revert with more sympathy to the Deux Sources. After all there is a mystical religion which is not an enlarged selfishness, as is the religion of humanity: you may remember what Benda2 says about this. Only it is not Bergson’s dynamic biological Messianism: it is something Platonic, poetic, ascetic, and ultrahuman. The mystics are influential, and may even revolutionize society (without perhaps improving it in the end) but that is precisely because repentance, like falling in love, can liberate mankind from old worldly ^ ^ habits and introduce, in the next age, a fresh naiveté and greenness into this mystilife. This renewal is not due to the mysticism directly, since — ^ ^ cism is merely negative from the worldly point of view: but it may follow the decay of an out-worn civilization, as a new Spring naturally follows winter. Thank you for writing: otherwise I might never have heard of their bereavement at the Villa Medici.3 Yours ever G.S. 1 Alfred Firmin Loisy (1857–1940), a French biblical critic, became the leader of Catholic modernism. His teachings were condemned by the Holy See, and he was
1933–1936
5:27
excommunicated. Loisy’s Y a-t-il deux sources de la religion et de la morale (Paris, 1933) is a discussion of Bergson’s Les Deux sources de la morale et de la religion. 2 Julien Benda (1867–1956), a French philosopher, essayist, and novelist, and a violent defender of strict rationalism, wrote Le Bergsonisme (1912), a controversial attack on Bergson’s philosophy. 3 The estate of Bayard and Sybil Cutting at Fiesole.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 18 May 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Hotel Bristol Rome May 18th 1933
Dear Cory You probably won’t mind receiving your allowance now instead of on June 15th, as you penitentially suggested. I hope the gaieties of the season have cleared your mind of philosophic despondency. You seemed to be worried at the fact that professors have opposite views, and hate one another. When was it otherwise? And if you eschewed philosophy on that account, and took, let us say, to history, because there everything is big clear and unmistakably on the most superficial human plane, you would find the same endless and bitter controversy. I have just finished an account of the French Revolution by a professor at the Sorbonne named Guyot,1 who is a rabid radical—appointed no doubt by the Herriot party.2 And last year I had read Bainville on Napoleon.3 What a contrast! Here there is no equality of talent, because Bainville is a good writer. But why? Probably the scattered facts, maliciously selected, are just as true in Guyot, or truer: but the fonction fabulatrice,4 the synthetic and dramatic power of imagination, the moral design of experience, is hopelessly inferior in him: and that is why he is a radical and an enemy of everything noble. The fonction fabulatrice comes in in history just as much as in theology, where Bergson appeals to it—have you read Bergson?—and of course in philosophy. There is no reason why it should take the same form in everybody: and if you extract the bare facts from that mental construction you won’t find them inconsistent, though differently selected and named, in the different schools. th I expect to stay here rather late—until June 15– —and then go directly ly [across ] to Cortina Yours aff G.S.
5:28
The Letters of George Santayana
1 Raymond Guyot (1877–1934) wrote volume III (1795–99) of the four-volume La Révolution Française (Paris, 1930). 2 The French Herriot Party (named for Édouard Herriot, 1872–1957) consisted of radical socialists who favored conciliatory foreign policy and payment of war debts to the United States. 3 Jacques Bainville (1879–1936) wrote the definitive biography, Napoleon (Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, 1931), as well as scholastic works on French history and politics. Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821) was emperor of the French (Napoleon I). After his second abdication of the throne, he surrendered to the British, hoping to find asylum in England but was exiled to Saint Helena, where he died of cancer. His body was brought back to Paris in 1840 and is entombed under the dome of the Invalides. 4 This phrase is from Bergson’s second chapter, “La Religion statique,” in Les Deux sources de la morale et de la religion. Fonction fabulatrice, according to Bergson, is the power of the human conscience to produce religious myths and rituals in order to protect itself against the idea of the inevitability of death.
To George Washburne Howgate 31 May 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Howgate)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, May 31, 1933.
Dear Mr. Howgate1 Thank you for your letter and the extensive bibliography, which contains several items I had wholly forgotten. The three articles in the Columbia Journal of 1911 on Russell’s “Philosophical Essays”2 I suppose are the parts of my paper on him in “Winds of Doctrine”. I had forgotten that they had appeared first in that review. I enclose a list of such omissions as I have been able to discover by going over my pile of old printed stuff. Unfortunately, in several cases, I can’t give you the exact dates, because I have kept only my article cut out of the review, and no date appears in it. Perhaps before you receive this my little book apropos of Locke entitled “Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy” will have appeared; also perhaps the “Septimana Spinozana”, containing all the papers read at the Tercentenary at The Hague including one of mine on “Ultimate Religion.” The editor is Martinus Nijhoff. The Hague. Yours sincerely GSantayana p. t. o.
1933–1936
5:29
P.S. My (first) schoolboy sonnet on “President Garfield” (in No. 1 of The Boston Latin School Register) was not merely rhetorical froth. My best school friend (who is still living in Boston), Bentley Warren, had left school a year early and gone to Williams, where he lived with the Garfield boys. Warren and I kept up a lively correspondence. Hence my interest in Pres. Garfield’s long illness and death.3 This is also the reason why the hero of my “novel”, if this ever appears, will be found to go to Williams College. P.S. 2. You revert to the idea of a contradiction or conflict in my mind between MacS. and Van T.4 Please let me repeat that, to my feeling, it is only a shift in attention or interest, not a doubt at all about doctrine. If you take the political moral point of view, and shout for your side in the football match, you are MacS. If you consider the place of shouting and football in the universe, you are Van T. The latter is therefore the deeper philosopher: yet the former is the more radical and ineradicable man, because man is an animal before he is a spirit, and can be a spirit only because he is alive, i.e. an animal. The nature of the human animal, however, is to be intelligent, to be speculative; and hence the vocation to transcend the conditions of his existence in his thought and worship. Additions to publications of George Santayana ^ ^ Dec. 1880. “Lines on Leaving the Bedford Street Schoolhouse.”5 (Poem privately printed.) Oct. 1881 to June 1882 Boston Latin School Register: ^ ^ “Sonnet on “President Garfield.” “Short History of the Class of ’82” Parody of “the Æneid” (running through most of the numbers)6
}
June 1902.
The Harvard Monthly. “The Dioscuri.” (Verse)7
April 1903.
Ibidem. “The Flight of Helen.” (Verse)8
April— June 1903
}
Journal of Comparative Literature. (Edited by J. B. Fletcher at Columbia) “Croce’s Aesthetics.”9
5:30
The Letters of George Santayana
June 1904
Harvard Monthly “Philosophers at Court” (Verse)10
Oct. 1904.
Oberlin Alumni Magazine “Tradition and Practice”11 (Baccalaureate Address.)
1911.
University of California Chronicle: reprinted as a pamphlet by the Philosophical Union “The Genteel Tradition in American Philosophy.”
About 1930.
The New Adelphi “Spengler”.12
''
The Latin School Register: a graduate number. “Fragment from Catullus.” (Verse)
Feb. 1932.
The Latin School Register: Fiftieth Anniversary number. “Glimpses of Old Boston.”
At Various recent dates
Life and Letters. Edited by Desmond Macarthy,13 London
''
“Hamlet” (reprint with slight corrections). In No 1 “A Few Remarks”. (“Crime”, “Prudence”, “Money”, “Self-Sacrifice”.) “Proust on Essences.”14,15
P.S. Also, “Cervantes”, Am. Encycl. of Biography. (?)16 Also, in the Harvard Monthly, July, 1899 a review of “Lucifer” signed “H.M.” but written by the author, the editors having confessed that they could find nobody to do it. I said “I will write it myself, but it will be complimentary. People will expect that, seeing I am one of the founders of the paper.” Also in the Yale Review, about 1926, “Preface to a System of Philosophy”.17 (Reprinted in the “Realm of Essence”) 1 George Washburne Howgate (1903–50) wrote the first book-length critical biography of Santayana: George Santayana (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1938). 2 “Russell’s Philosophical Essays” published in Philosophy 8 (1911) includes: “The Study of Essence,” 57–63; “The Critique of Pragmatism,” 113–24; and “Hypostatic Ethics,” 421–32. Reprinted, preceded by a new section entitled “A New Scholasticism,” as chapter IV of Doctrine and in the Triton Edition, vol. 7 (1937), 91–127. A review of Bertrand Russell’s Philosophical Essays (London and New York, 1910).
1933–1936
5:31
3 The sonnet was published in September 1881 and in Complete Poems, 366. Bentley Wirt Warren (1864–1947) was with the law firm of Warren, Garfield, Whiteside, and Lamson in Boston. James Abram Garfield (1831–81), elected the twentieth president of the United States, was assassinated. Harry Augustus Garfield (1863–1942), professor of politics at Princeton and president of Williams College (1908–34), and James Rudolph Garfield (1865–1950), a lawyer and secretary of the interior under President Theodore Roosevelt, were President Garfield’s sons. 4 McStout and Van Tender are interlocutors in Santayana’s “Walt Whitman: A Dialogue,” first published in The Harvard Monthly 10 (May 1890): 85–92. See Howgate’s George Santayana, 90. 5 Published inComplete Poems, 363–66. 6 “The Class of 1882” was published in September and October 1881. “The Aeneid” was published September 1881 through June 1882 and in Complete Poems, 366–87. Vergil’s epic poem, in twelve books, traces the history of the Roman people from Aeneus, the Trojan hero. 7 “The Dioscuri: Two Interludes” ( June 1902) and in Complete Poems, 342–45. 8 “The Flight of Helen: A Fragment” (April 1903) and in Complete Poems, 346–49. 9 “Croce’s Aesthetics,” a review of Estetica come scienza, was reprinted in The Idler and His Works (1957). 10 “Philosophers at Court, from Act IV” ( June 1904). Complete play printed in Testament. 11 October 1904. 12 This article is a review of Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West (1928–29). Spengler (1880–1936) is known mainly for his contribution to philosophy of history. 13 Life and Letters was a literary monthly periodical founded and edited (1928–33) by Desmond MacCarthy. It continued as Life and Letters Today, and in 1939 absorbed the London Mercury and Bookman. The final issue appeared in June 1950. Sir Desmond MacCarthy (1878–1952), an English journalist and critic, was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. MacCarthy became literary editor of The New Statesman in 1920 and afterwards drama critic. He wrote several books and contributed to the London Sunday Times. 14 Santayana’s “Introduction to Hamlet” appears in volume 15 of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, edited by Sidney Lee (1906–8) and was reprinted with minor changes as “Hamlet” in 1928. “A Few Remarks” and “Proust on Essences” were published in 1929. 15 Marcel Proust (1871–1922) was a French novelist. His complicated style seeks by total recall to recapture the minutest psychological and sensory detail; his work recreates a past society with the illusion of complete objectiveness. He wrote À la recherche du temps perdues (16 vols., 1913–27; translated as Remembrance of Things Past, 1922–32). 16 “Cervantes (1547–1616)” appeared in A Library of the World’s Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, edited by Charles Dudley Warner, vol. 8, 3451–7. 17 April 1924.
5:32
The Letters of George Santayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 3 June 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome June 3, 1933 Dear Cory I am glad you are happy in Cornwall and inspired. Of course I should always be glad to see you: but you mustn’t make a journey for the purpose of joining me. We must wait until, as last year in London, circumstances make it natural that we should meet. You speak of helping me with the novel. You would do so if you cared to read over the type-written part, and noting —^ed^ in the margin anything that needs to be changed. There is a personage, Jim,1 whom I should like to have revised by, or compared with, your friend MacCready.2 My naval knowledge comes more by intuition than by experience. But this “novel” is a poem: both language and setting must be transposed into the author’s medium of thought and into his style. I expect to go to Cortina about June 15th If you will let me know at once whether you are willing I should send you the whole type-written part, so far, I will send it to you before I leave Rome. There are some corrections to the part already in your possession. One—which please make in your copy, since it matters for the tone—on the first page of the prologue. “strawberry-mash” should read “strawberry-mess”.3 Yours affectionately G.S. 1
In Puritan, James “Jim” Darnley is the captain of Peter Alden’s yacht, the Black Swan. “Commander Horatio Victor Muriel MacHardy, an old English friend of mine and fellow lodger at the pension in Paris. ‘Mac’ was naval enough in every sense of the word but hardly a prototype for Jim Darnley” (Years, 111). 3 Puritan, 11. 2
1933–1936
To Ralph Barton Perry 3 June 1933 • Rome, Italy
5:33
(MS: Houghton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W1 Rome, June 3, 1933 Dear Perry1 Here is a letter of Wm James2 which Mrs. Toy3 has found among old ^ ^ papers. I don’t remember why I once sent it to her, and I am a little disappointed, because I thought it was another in which James upbraided me for my too “Faustlike nature”.4 However, at Mrs. Toy’s suggestion, I send this to you, to be annexed to the collection of James’s letters, whoever is in possession of them. I am a rolling stone, and no worthy repository for perishable relics. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957), an American realist philosopher, attended Princeton University (B.A., 1896) and received his M.A. (1897) and Ph.D. (1899) from Harvard. He briefly taught at Williams College and Smith College, and from 1902 to 1946 at Harvard, where, after 1930, he was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Philosophy. He was Hyde Lecturer at various French universities during 1921–22. Perry edited The Thought and Character of William James: as revealed in unpublished correspondence and notes, together with his published writings (2 vols., [Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1935]), which includes three letters from James to Santayana. 2 William James (1842–1910), the eminent American philosopher and psychologist, taught at Harvard (1872–1907), first physiology and anatomy, later psychology and philosophy. His works are noted for their lucid and trenchant literary style. James also studied art in Paris and pursued scientific studies in Germany. Harvard awarded him the M.D. in 1869. His books include The Principles of Psychology (1890) and Pragmatism (1907). James’s relationship with his pupil Santayana was one of mutual respect for one another’s intellect, philosophical disagreement, and temperamental antithesis. 3 Nancy Saunders Toy (d. 1941), the wife of Crawford Howell Toy (1836–1919, Hancock Professor of Hebrew and Oriental Languages at Harvard 1880–1909), corresponded with Santayana in his later years. 4 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe develops the character of Faust as the old scholar who yearns to comprehend not so much all knowledge as all experience, but finds that in order to do so he must promise his immortal soul to Mephistopheles.
5:34
The Letters of George Santayana
To John Hall Wheelock 3 June 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, June 3, 1933 Dear Mr. Wheelock1 Heaven preserve me from translating all the German, French, Dutch, and Italian papers to be included in the Septimana Spinozana to be published by Nijhoff at The Hague. You speak as if I were the author of them all: I was guilty only of my own contribution entitled Ultimate Religion. I hardly think you would wish to reproduce the entire collection in an English dress; but if you could induce Nijhoff to allow you, after a decent interval, to republish my paper alone, it would be a great satisfaction to me; and the little volume would be more than a pamphlet, because I have prepared some extensive “Supplementary Notes”, developing points in my paper which seemed to me to invite explanation: Solitude, Prayer, Unity in Nature, etc. I had intended to make some such request of Nijhoff on my own account; but the extraordinary delay in issuing the volume— which was to have appeared in November last—has made he keep silence for the present. Yours sincerely G Santayana 1
John Hall Wheelock (1886–1978), a member of the Harvard class of 1908, succeeded Maxwell Perkins as senior editor of Charles Scribner’s Sons, Publishers, and in 1932 became director of the company.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 11 June 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS postcard: Columbia)
Roma/e, June 11, 1933. Before I leave Rome—which will be about the 20th as the heat as yet is by no means oppressive—I will send you the rest of the type-written portion of the novel. No need of rereading the earlier chapters now. There will be time enough for you to do that before the whole is ready for a general review. You can make notes on this new fragment in the meantime. It doesn’t reach Mario: but you will see I come to the heavy work, in the Iffley episodes in Part III, as well as at the end of Part II. G.S.
1933–1936
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 13 June 1933 • Rome, Italy
5:35
(MS: Unknown) Rome, June 13, 1933
Dear Cory Today I am despatching the MS of the novel, as far as the text has been type-written. I count that the Prologue and the first two Parts will make about half the whole book. Probably I shall reach Cortina on the 22nd or 23rd: you had better write to me there, Hotel Miramonti, when you do write. There is nothing left for me to do here except pack my books and papers—a horrid job, though it seems so simple—and take my ticket. My mind is a little confused about your cheques, but I suppose you won’t mind getting another. I should think the 20th of each month would be the best moment, I mean the most remote from the plethora of the 1st Of Strong I have heard nothing for some time, and I don’t know whether Margaret is coming to Paris or not. Yours affly G.S.
To Mary Annette Beauchamp Russell 19 June 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Huntington) Hotel Bristol, Rome June 19, 1933
Dear Lady Russell1 “The only good novels he knew of, written by a woman, were those of a lover of gardens, with an amused understanding of mankind and a just affection for whatever in them might be flowerlike and human: but Peter was an incorrigible Epicurean … . The truly sweet fruits of existence were to be picked by the way; they were amusement, kindness, and beauty.”2 “Peter” is the uprooted vague, ineffectual American father of the hero of my novel—a model youth; and I quote this opinion of his because it almost serves to return the charming compliment you pay me in your last letter. Not quite; because “amused understanding” is no equivalent for “verklärte Heiterkeit”,3 but it points prosaically in the same direction, and shows that we are conscious of smiling at the world in the same spirit.
5:36
The Letters of George Santayana
My “novel” is making progress. I have abandoned the professors for the moment in the hope of finishing it. There is a German governess4 in it who has been said, by a friend who wanted to flatter me, to be like the Germans in your books.5 But she is a dear, and her letters to her sister in Göttingen help me to describe various incidents which I shouldn’t have known how to report in my own words. I am leaving Rome tomorrow for Cortina, and it is possible that in September or October I may be at the Riveria. If so, you will hear from me. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Mary Annette Beauchamp von Arnim’s (1866–1941) most successful book was Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898). Later she signed her writings “Elizabeth.” She was the wife of the German aristocrat Count von Arnim-Schlagenthin (d. 1910). John Francis Stanley Russell married “Elizabeth” in 1916; she left him in 1918 and moved to France. Her novel Vera (1921) is a characterization of her life with Russell. See Persons, 479–86. 2 See Puritan, 238. 3 Brilliant serenity (German). 4 Irma Schlote is Oliver Alden’s German governess in Puritan. 5 In the letter of 13 May 1932 to Mrs. Toy, Santayana writes: “It is indeed a great compliment to be told that Irma seems written by ‘Elizabeth.’ ”
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 25 June 1933 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS postcard: Columbia)
Hotel Miramonti, Cortina d’Ampezzo. June 25, 1933 Glad to have your letter.—In spite of bad weather, I am comfortable here, and deep in the novel. Portrait of young Mario by Van Dyke,1 executed this morning in the style of your friend Pater’s Imaginary Portraits.2—S. is going to Paris as his family [across] is coming from U.S. Yours G.S. 1 Sir Anthony Van Dyck or Vandyke (1599–1641) was a Flemish portrait and religious painter. In England Charles I made him court painter; his patrician image of English aristocrats greatly influenced English portrait painting. 2 Walter Horatio Pater (1839–94), an English essayist and critic, was the leader of a movement stressing the moral importance of artistic perfection. Imaginary Portraits (Macmillan) is Pater’s 1887 study on the theme of early promise and early death.
1933–1936
To William Lyon Phelps 10 July 1933 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
5:37
(MS: Beinecke)
Hotel Miramonti Cortina d’Ampezzo July 10, 1933 Dear Billy Not Erasmus,1 Spinoza! But even that is not accurate. I went last September to the Hague, where they had a meeting in honour of the tercentenary of Spinoza’s birth, and I read a paper which is only attached to Spinoza by way of the zenith: for, mind you, though physically every zenith is at a hopelessly different point from every other, spiritually the nearer anyone gets to his own zenith, the nearer he is to everybody else’s. This paper is to appear in a polyglot volume entitled Septimana Spinozana which was to have been issued last November, but is still delayed. Perhaps it will appear by November next. As I approach 70 (December next the venerable number will be complete) I feel that I may abandon the future more and more to Providence. I go on working, but without being at all confident that it will be possible, or would be best, for me to accomplish anything [illegible ]special. At present, I am crawlingly proceeding with my “novel”: this is something nobody else could do, since it g is/ ves the emotion s of my experi^ ^ ^ ^ ^^ ences, and not my thoughts or experiences themselves: whereas The Realm of Truth or The Realm of Spirit might perfectly well be described by some future writer better than I should do it. However, I am very well, and not worried by the crisis or the collapse of the dollar: it makes me much poorer on paper, but I had a broad margin to my budget, and as yet have no need of changing my way of living; and it is not impossible, if I should live ten years more, that I might finish my whole programme. This place—where I have spent three previous summers—is really delightful: warm enough in the sun to make the system exude its waste substances, and cool enough at night to kill all mosquitoes and even flies. Besides the Dolomites are highly picturesque, the peasants also, and the people at this hotel very tolerable—since I don’t have to speak to them. The trouble is that on September 1–st winter sets in, and I shall have to move to Venice or elsewhere until it is time to return to my Roman diggings.
5:38
The Letters of George Santayana
Well: You at Great Yale are probably being carried sky-high on the crest of twenty enthusiasms at least. Don’t break your neck, and God bless you! [across] Kindest regards— Come again to Rome: it is improving yearly more than if it were in America. You will be astonished. Yours ever [across text ] G.S. 1
Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1469–1536) was a Dutch humanist, Catholic priest, and teacher. The broadest of humanists, Erasmus’s position with regard to the Reformation caused the enmity of Luther.
To George Sturgis 11 July 1933 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Miramonti Cortina d’Ampezzo, July 11, 1933 Dear George If you are not happy together, and not inclined to regard life as essentially a penance, perhaps it is as well that you should separate: but what is to become of the boys? Does the Court decide this vital point, or have you made an amicable arrangement in this respect also? If you are to keep them, as I partly infer, you will have to provide an adopted mother for them, in some capacity, at least until they are old enough to go to boarding school. This is rather an ominous complication. It is wise and chivalrous of you not to wish to make any accusations against Rosamond; but I can’t help asking myself whether she is pursuing positive happiness (I mean, what she expects to be happiness) or merely fleeing from boredom. It makes a difference. But without demanding any indiscreet confidences on your part, I shall await developments with interest.1 Thank you for telling me about my income for this last half-year. It is just what I wanted to know, to reassure me in the midst of this financial confusion. If the dollar comes down to 50 cents (and that I believe is about the Mexican or silver standard to which the Democrats have always looked with envy) I shall be deprived, practically, of half my income: but as I spent less than half, I shall still have enough. What Roosevelt2 says and thinks (to judge by what I have read of his in the papers) m / seems to me rubbish. He talks like a professor of economics with a bee in his bonnet. What is a “dollar in harmony with the needs of production” (or something of that nature? Any dollar, any agreed value or coin, if it is worth
1933–1936
5:39
anything in itself and moderately steady in value, is equally harmonious with the values of other things and equally good as a common denominator and nominal medium of exchange. What is the use, then, of changing from one sort of dollar, or one weight of gold, to another? There is a use: and though I laugh at what Roosevelt says, I see a very clear reason for what he does. By halving the value of the dollar he will not only make prices go up (double them, in fact, other things being equal)—which is be re main really of exactly the same pure foolishness, since they —ings will — ^ ^ intrinsic and relative and exchange value—but he will halve the government expense —diture for pensions, salaries, and interest on the debt—unless these payments are expressly increased by law: and at the same time he will halve the real income of idle persons like myself, living on the interest of floating capital. So that, whether Roosevelt means it or not, he is driving a nail into the coffin of capitalism; and at the same time (what is strangely undemocratic) diminishing enormously the purchasing power of wages, pensions, and all incomes fixed in quantity of money. But I see a possible complication and mitigation of this result. In so far as my property, for instance, includes definite objects—land, factories, merchandise—its value expressed in dollars will rise at the same time that the purchasing power of the interest diminishes. To this extent, the change will be just as futile in killing capitalism (I mean especially, in killing this ^ ^ system of living on mere money a/out at interest) as it is futile in “harmonizing” currency with real values. Cortina is pleasant, as usual, and I am passing the time quite contend/ tedly and doing a little work on the novel—saving, too, because this excellent hotel is cheaper than the Bristol. It is true I have no sitting room. Yours affly G.S. 1
George and Rosamond were divorced in 1944. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) became thirty-second president of the United States. Inaugurated at the height of the 1933 crisis, Roosevelt declared a general bank holiday. Government agencies were set up to revive the economy by vast expenditures of public money, by developing natural resources, and by offering work to the unemployed. 2
5:40
The Letters of George Santayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 14 July 1933 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Miramonti Cortina d’Ampezzo July 14, 1933 Dear Cory This veiled threat of discontinuing your allowance is not new on S.’s part: he has spoken to me in the same sense repeatedly; and the collapse of the dollar, added to a great fall in capital, will reduce his income, in Italian money, to perhaps half what it was. As he can’t very well give up his villa1 or motor, or take in boarders, he may be really compelled to dismiss you with his blessing. When he has talked of leaving you (for your own good, of course) to make your way in the world, I have always said that perhaps it might really be for your ultimate interest. I feel partly responsible for having kept you so long dangling, and I should do what I could to help you in any difficulty. After all, how long are S. and I likely to live? The important point for you is that he shouldn’t revoke the legacy in which you are concerned. There is a trick about it, even as it stands; but with the old value of the dollar it would probably and ultimately have provided you with an income sufficient for all your needs, especially if you remained unmarried. But if the dollar settles down to be half a dollar, or 66 cents, that prospect becomes less smiling. Still, that is the point that really matters: and I have besought S. not to rescind his arrangements in that particular: and when he last spoke to me about it, perhaps a year ago, he seemed definitely determined not to make any change. In order to keep him in this mood, it is in your interest to continue doing what you can to keep his conscience satisfied. You know his character as well as I do: in fact, better, perhaps; because until lately I took him so completely as a matter of course, and as a [illegible ]thoroughly conscientious and just man, that I may not have seen to the bottom of the well. His attachments are not matters of personal affection: consider his daughter, or me, or Pinsent, or Miss Paget:2 so with you. He has moments in which he is enthusiastic about you: but it is because he then imagines that you will fit in beautifully into his plan of work. He has never cared for anything but for his work, his health, and his duty: his health, because necessary to his work, and his work, perhaps, because necessary to make it an absolute duty to nurse his health. He loves you, he loves us all, when,
1933–1936
5:41
and in so far as, we fall into this picture: otherwise he feels no bond. You are therefore always in real danger of being erased from the tables of the truly deserving. My nephew wrote the other day, saying that my income for the halfyear ending on the first of this month had been nearly $8000; even if the dollar should drop to 50 cents, or to the value of the Mexican or silver dollar which has always fascinated the democratic mind, provided American securities don’t depreciate further, I shall still have all that is requisite for keeping up my present way of life: and I could transfer something from my American capitalist income to my London bank-account, if my literary earnings are not enough to replenish the latter. It is probable, therefore, that I shall be able to keep sending you what I send at present, in any case: but the dream of wealth that visited me two or three years ago has vanished. I saw in the Criterion,3 in Eliot’s “Commentary”, that the American Humanists are now shepherded by Dewey, and bleat in his flock. Do you know anything about this? I also have been meaning to ask you if you have heard of Boring’s “Physical Dimensions of Consciousness”,4 or read it. He is the Harvard professor of psychology, successor to James and Münsterberg.5 A young man named Nelson Smith, who was in Rome last winter and is writing a thesis about my philosophy, sent me Boring’s book, with a request for marginal comments. I therefore can’t send it to you: but I will order it for you, if you want it. It is perverse and half-educated in expression, but (without mentioning me) takes substantially my view of the nature of mind. Yours affly G.S. 1
Strong’s villa, Le Balze, is located at Fiesole, Florence. It now belongs to Georgetown University, a gift of Strong’s daughter, Margaret. 2 Possibly related to the Pinsent family of Birmingham, England. Hume Chancellor Pinsent’s great-grandfather was the nephew of David Hume. Hume Pinsent’s oldest son, David, was at Trinity College in 1910 and attended the meetings that Bertrand Russell hosted. Miss Paget is unidentified. 3 The Criterion (1922–39), an influential literary periodical launched as a quarterly and edited by T. S. Eliot, became the New Criterion during 1926 and the Monthly Criterion in 1927. 4 Edwin Garrigues Boring (1886–1968), an American psychologist and a Cornell graduate, taught at Harvard and became director (beginning in 1924) of the psychological laboratory there. His Physical Dimensions of Consciousness was published in 1933. 5 Hugo Münsterberg (1863–1916) was a German-born psychologist and philosopher. At the instigation of William James, Münsterberg was persuaded to come to Harvard as professor of psychology in 1892, where he directed the psychological laboratory.
5:42
The Letters of George Santayana
To Marie Mattingly Meloney 14 July 1933 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Miramonti Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. July 14, 1933 Dear Mrs. Meloney1 The above heading is a sufficient answer to the immediate object of your letter. I am seldom in England. If you or Mr. Lippman2 were thinking of asking me for some contribution to your Sunday Magazine, I am afraid that for the present I should have to be excused, as I am writing very little, and that little pre-empted. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Marie Mattingly (Mrs. William Brown) Meloney was editor of the Sunday Magazine of the New York Herald Tribune. Walter Lippmann had written to Santayana on 12 July 1933 introducing Mrs. Meloney. 2 Walter Lippmann (1889–1974), distinguished American political journalist, was a member of Harvard’s class of 1910 and served as Santayana’s assistant. During his student years and afterwards, Lippmann was a leader among the young socialists. He reversed his political position in the early 1930s and in his later career epitomized the American conservative intellectual.
To Henry Ward Abbot 21 July 1933 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Miramonti Cortina d’Ampezzo July 21, 1933 Dear Harry Your impatience is most flattering, and I am asking the English publisher of the Locke lecture to send you a copy. Scribner seems not to have brought out the American edition yet, I suppose waiting for good times to return. The English edition appeared in May. As to the Spinoza paper, I am myself a trifle annoyed. Nijhoff, at The Hague, was to have issued the Septimana Spinozana (in which my paper appears) last November, then in January, then in the spring, and now in the autumn. I have not received any explanation, but probably the mul-
1933–1936
5:43
titude of languages and of contributors have —s made of Babel of the editor’s mind, who was not well to begin with. All this comes, not of my being mad à enfermer,1 but only weak enough to have accepted invitations to waste my sweetness in the lectureroom air, and surrender my MS to third parties. It won’t happen again. It is most entertaining living in these times. This Roosevelt is more Caesarian than the spluttering Theodore;2 we are having Fascism under an —other name^s^ rising in France, in Germany, and in the U.S.! And the English Church—what a comedy that is too! I enjoy it immensely. Yours sincerely G.S. 1
Mad enough to be locked up (French). Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) organized and commanded the 1st United States Volunteer Calvary (“Rough Riders”) during the Spanish-American War. As twentysixth president of the United States, Roosevelt championed the rights of the “little man,” engaged in trust-busting, and followed a policy of conservation of natural resources. 2
To Henry Ward Abbot [Late July 1933] • [Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy]
(MS: Columbia)
Dear Harry When you get your second copy, give it to anybody whose soul you think it might save. G.S.
To Antonio Marichalar [Before August 1933] • [Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy]
(MS: Unknown)
[…] Le que dice usted en varias partes acerca del panteísmo, y en particular del de Spinoza, me hace pensar que sería oportuno dar una definición de ese sistema. ¿Es pura cosmologia, o es a la vez una religión? Y si se aparta la aplicación religiosa, ¿en qué se distingue el panteísmo del naturalismo o monismo de los alemanes? Como en casi todos los sistemas, creo que en el panteísta hay alguna confusión entre la física y la moral, y que convendría explicarla.1, 2 1
Translation:
What you say in several places about pantheism, and in particular about Spinoza’s pantheism, makes me think that it would be well to give a definition of that system. Is it merely cosmology or is it at the same time a religion? And if we
5:44
The Letters of George Santayana
leave aside the religious application of it, what distinguishes pantheism from the naturalism or monism of the Germans? As in almost all systems, I believe that in pantheism there is some confusion between physics and morals, and that it would be a good idea to explain it. 2
Antonio Marichalar, Marqués de Montesa (b. 1893), Spanish nobleman and man of letters, took a particular interest in Santayana’s writings.
To Charles Augustus Strong 4 August 1933 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Miramonti Cortina d’Ampezzo, August 4, 1933 Dear Strong Thank you for your letter I was very glad to have news of you and to know that the family had actually arrived. The fact that they contemplate remaining for the winter surprises me a little, just when the dollar has lost one third of its value for us. I hope this means that their horizon is clear, and that the old gentleman has been enlightened. I had thought your French article was finished long ago, but these things are never done till printed. I know it only too well. Good luck with the venture! Yours ever G.S.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 15 August 1933 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Miramonti Cortina d’Ampezzo Aug. 15, 1933 Dear Cory There is no change here, except that it has been as hot as in other places. However, today the weather has broken and we shall doubtless return to the normal. The hotel is literally full—esaurito1—with noisy Italians. I like them less than the badeaux2 etc, that haunt the Pincio and the Roma. But I don’t speak to them; and the novel is progressing, though at a snail’s pag/ce. However, I have now got to Mario.
1933–1936
5:45
I expect to leave for Venice, Hotel Danieli, early in September. Yours affly G.S. 1
Sold out (Italian). Gaping strollers (French).
2
To Charles P. Davis 17 August 1933 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Cortina, Aug. 17, 1933 Dear Davis,1 Since I wrote to you last I have discovered in a letter the exact date of my sister’s death. It occurred on the 10th of February, 1928, when she was th 77 years of age, having been born in Manila on June 6– 1851. Thank you for your kind letter and the article enclosed. I had seen it, but am not sorry to have a second copy of this bouquet. There are no mistakes in it, as far as I know, except that I don’t speak any language, except English perhaps, “like a native”.2 I read other languages more or less easily, six or seven of them, and I speak Spanish, French, and Italian enough for practical purposes; but I can’t write, or speak adequately, in anything but English. That is why I stick to it. –By [ the way, your own French is not perfect. You shouldn’t say Votre vieux ami but Votre vieil ami.–] 3 You ask me what I think of Erskine’s article.4 Well, he is a professor of literature, yet he criticizes rather from the point of view of popular American philosophy. If he had been considering me as a writer, he wouldn’t have passed over the Soliloquies in England and the Dialogues in Limbo which (I think) are my best books. The Life of Reason, which they prefer at Columbia, is not so well written, is more professorial and lecture-like, and is philosophically less fundamental than my later books; but it was largely written in America, and when I was teaching, so that it moves in a moralistic, humanistic, atmosphere which they can appreciate. I think it is sensible, and contains some good passages and sayings, such as Erskine quotes. But neither as a writer — or nor as a philosopher can I be judged by it.
5:46
The Letters of George Santayana
I am now trying to complete (and rewrite) my “novel” which, if it ever appears, will probably give a better picture of what I really know or think about the world than any of my other books. But, God willing, I still mean to finish the Realms of Being also. Why don’t you retire and come to Rome on a pilgrimage? Your old friend G.S. 1
Charles “Charlie” P. Davis was a boyhood companion of Santayana. Santayana served as his sponsor at his Catholic christening. Davis wrote to Susan Sastre for years (see Persons, 173). 2 Several Spanish friends of Santayana have informed me that he spoke Spanish fluently and without a trace of foreign accent [D. C.]. 3 Your old friend (French). 4 John Erskine (1879–1951) was a critic, novelist, musician, and English professor at Columbia University. His article “Crusades for Common Sense,” in the “Sunday Books Magazine” of the New York Herald Tribune (30 July 1933), defends Santayana from Ludwig Lewisohn in Lewisohn’s Expression in America (1932).
To Henry Ward Abbot 29 August 1933 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS postcard: Columbia)
Cortina, Aug. 29, 1933 Thank you for your long letter, which I can’t now answer adequately.— Some years ago I explained to you quite fully how and in what measure the Lady of the Sonnets1 was an ideal synthesis, with some real ingredients, but quite chemically transformed and unrecognizable. You seemed at the time to appreciate the explanation, but as you have forgotten it, I won’t repeat it.2 My portrait in the newspaper is from a photo of 1923. G.S. 1
This is the idealized figure to whom Santayana’s Second Series of thirty love sonnets is addressed. (Sonnets, 25–54) See Holzberger’s discussion of the identity of the “Dark Lady of the Sonnets” in the Introduction to Complete Poems, 49–53. Cory believed the real figure behind the idealized personage addressed in the love sonnets was John Francis Stanley Russell. 2 In the 16 January 1924 letter to Abbot, Santayana wrote: “The lady of the sonnets, far from being the one you absurdly mention, is a myth, a symbol: certainly she stands for Somebody, not always for the same Somebody, and generally for a hint or suggestion drawn from reality rather than for any specific passion; but the enthusiasm is speculative, not erotic … .”
1933–1936
5:47
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 2 September 1933 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (MS postcard: Unknown) Cortina, Sept. 2, ’33 On clearing out my writing-table, in readiness for departure, I find a lot of notices of the Five Essays,1 and a long article by Erskine, sent me by friends or by the C.U.2 Press, which seems to do this for it’s authors, although incompletely, because they never sent me the reviews in the Times Supplement or the one by Squires3—which I daresay you saw. I send them in case they may amuse you.4 G.S. 1
Turns. Columbia University. 3 The Times review is 1 June 1933. Squires and his review are unidentified. 4 Unlocated. 2
To Charles Augustus Strong 6 September 1933 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Sept. 6, 1933 HÔTEL ROYAL DANIELI VENEZIA
Dear Strong Your card reached me when I was packing to leave Cortina, and I am now installed here in a little room in the entresol1 immediately over the heads of the innumerable passers-by. Cortina is lovely, but I am not sorry to be again in a big town. Last night, with a full moon and music in the Piazza and a crowd as in the old days, it was really very jolly. They also brought me a/over the new road, which might be a motor speedway to ^ ^ Coney Island, with poles and [illegible ]wires and huge boardings: but the arrival at the new business part of Venice isn’t bad. There is a large railway station (not far from the old one) with cabs and motors in front, and then, opposite, the landing stages for the boats and gondolas. We threaded the whole Grand Canal in a big motor-launch: and it was sad to see the palaces apparently uninhabited and the gondolas tossing about in the wild waves.
5:48
The Letters of George Santayana
I expect to stay here about a month and then go straight back to Rome. Pinchetti, the proprietor of the Bristol, has promised to reduce my rent, and I am rather longing to get back to my books.2 I couldn’t come to you for a long visit, and it seems hardly worth while to stop for a short one, which would involve two disagreeable day journeys instead of one harmless night in one’s own compartment. But I suppose you will come to Rome in October, the sooner the better, and we can exchange impressions there. Even when I get back to my books I sha’n’t find a Greek dictionary among them. Do you happen to remember (you are an accurate Greek scholar) the exact forms of the Greek for iron and for Zephyr? You see my mind is wandering over the whole range of creation. Cory writes with enthusiasm about a forth-coming essay in which he is to dazzle us with his metaphysical brilliancy, and Miller has asked for more help. He never is, but always to be, blest by the Archbishops of York and of Canterbury. At my instigation he has revealed to me something of his theological position. It isn’t high-church modernism, as I had imagined, but something emotional-Evangelical, Lutheran or Quaker-like.— Love to the family from G.S. 1 Mezzanine (French for low rooms situated between the ground floor and first floor of a building). 2 “The Honorable” Cesare Pinchetti, the proprietor of the Hotel Bristol was a leading Fascist.
To James C. Ayer 10 September 1933 • Venice, Italy
(MS postcard: Union)
Venice, Sept. 10, 1933 Sorry, but I can’t give you1 a list of all my writings. A young man is trying to make one, and will get a Ph.D. if he succeeds. But if your friend2 has read one of my books and wishes to read another, I might make a suggestion. For instance, if the lady is Hard-minded Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy, ( just out) The Genteel Tradition
Soft-minded Platonism and the Spiritual Life. Dialogues in Limbo.
1933–1936
at Bay. Scepticism and Animal Faith.
5:49
Soliloquies in England Poems
Even when these fountains are dry she needn’t despair. By that time I may have written something more. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Dr. James C. Ayer of New York City. Unidentified.
2
To George Perrigo Conger 20 September 1933 • Venice, Italy
(MS postcard: Minnesota)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Venice, Sept. 20, 1933. I expect to be here (Hotel Danieli) until the middle of October, and then in Rome (Hotel Bristol) for the winter. If you and Mrs. Conger1 are passing through either place, I should be very glad of it. Please let me know, in that case, where you are staying, and we can make an appointment, as I am not always visible to visitors. Yours sinere —cerely GSantayana 1 George Perrigo Conger (1884–1960), an American philosopher, was president of the western division of the American Philosophical Association from 1944 to 1954. He was married to Agnes Conger (b. 1888).
5:50
The Letters of George Santayana
To George William Russell 22 September 1933 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Unknown)
Sept. 22, 1933. /o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
C
HÔTEL ROYAL DANIELI VENEZIA
Dear Mr. Russell1 It is interesting to know that you have noticed the quotation from your poem, “The Virgin Mother”, in my “Realm of Matter”.2 The devil notoriously quotes Scripture for his own purposes, and you must forgive me if I used your words to point a moral which (as I [illegible ]now see) was not the one you intended. The immanence of “love” or potential “beauty” in the material world is, in one sense, a truism: when anything arises or happens we may say that there was a “mysterious” tendency in the conditions to produce just that thing. The God of Platonism and Christianity is simply a hypostasis of this tendency in nature towards the good, and is per^ ^ haps less “external” than we may think: if the tendency is a distinct power working in things, it is a part of nature. Perhaps this was exactly what you meant by saying that we should reverence earth and not heaven: the real motive force towards the beautiful is inside the world and not beyond. The centre of my own interest is [illegible ]at a somewhat different ^ ^ point. I don’t know, and I don’t much care, what the existing motive force is that makes for the beautiful: in any case it is very imperfectly successful. What I care for is the beautiful itself and the vision of the beautiful, in so far as they manage to exist or to be suggested: and this frail, intermittent, but actual realization of the beautiful I call the spiritual sphere All life is, intrinsically, a part of it; but horribly interrupted and perturbed Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 George William Russell (1867–1935, pseudonym “Æ”) was an active member of the Irish nationalist movement and, between 1904 and 1930, editor of two prominent Irish periodicals. A major writer of the Irish literary renaissance, his poems and plays embody a mystical view of life with an emphasis on man’s spiritual nature. “The Virgin Mother” appeared in Collected Poems by A.E. (London: Macmillan, 1913). 2 In the preface to Matter (xii–xiii), Santayana quoted the following stanzas: Who is that goddess to whom men should pray, But her from whom their hearts have turned away,
1933–1936
5:51
Out of whose virgin being they were born, Whose mother-nature they have named with scorn, Calling her holy substance common clay. … Ah, when I think this earth on which I tread Hath borne these blossoms of the lovely dead, And makes the living heart I love to beat, I look with sudden awe beneath my feet— As you with erring reverence overhead.
To Charles Augustus Strong 25 September 1933 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller) Sept. 25, 1933
HÔTEL ROYAL DANIELI VENEZIA
Dear Strong I hadn’t thought of moving to Rome before Oct. 15th, but if you will send me a post-card, when the time comes, telling me up to what date you are likely to remain there, I will try to hasten my journey, so as not to miss you. I particularly want to consult you again about Cory. The “crisis” makes it natural to reconsider his future, as far as you and I are concerned in it. The arrangements with the family, which you describe, are interesting, and it will be pleasant for you to have the children for the winter, and excellent for them—much better than New York or Florence; but I am afraid you will soon feel that you are not living in your own house. As to abandoning epistemology, that won’t make much difference if you take up history or “aesthetics” instead—and one must take up something, so long as the brain has steam up. Your testamentary phrase, in the French article, I think will engage sympathy: there is quiet emotion in it: and I should by all means put it in. G.S. [across] P.S. Thank you for the Greek words.
5:52
The Letters of George Santayana
To John Hall Wheelock 25 September 1933 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Sept. 25, 1933
HÔTEL ROYAL DANIELI VENEZIA
Dear Mr. Wheelock No, I am afraid it would lead me too far afield to engage in the discussion about man improving “or less” (as they say in Italian). The facts on the one hand, the standards on the other, are too complicated for my already rather weary head. I may say privately, however, that I think there is no biological deterioration, no loss of essential faculty: only a different complex of stimulations and opportunities. We mustn’t ask for every fruit at every season. I am glad the Turns of Thought have appeared and that you think the book worth sponsoring. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 2 October 1933 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Danieli, Venice Oct. 2. 1933 Dear Cory, Strong has arrived here today and tells me he can’t send you any more cheques for the present. His London account is reduced to £2, and he can’t count on more than $5000 income altogether for next year. Margaret & George are to live with him this winter,—they have a grand apartment in Florence as well,—and will pay all his house expenses, except of course Aldo1 and the motor. So it is agreed that I will look after you for the present. As I explained in a recent letter, it is still possible for me to do so; but the future is uncertain, and you ought to consider what
1933–1936
5:53
you can do to support yourself. Is life in London promising, or would it be better to try New York? When this “crisis” has passed, if things return somewhat to their old status, I may be able to invite you to come and live with me, or near me, to keep me company in my old age; nothing would please me better, than if you were willing to do so; but as yet, I can’t propose that plan, because I don’t know whether I shall be in a position to carry it out. I am sorry S. didn’t give you a longer and clearer notice of his default; but the result has its advantages. You needn’t now do any more work that goes against the grain: do just what the spirit moves you to do, and I will help you along as long and as well as I can. Probably I can send you £40 a month all this coming winter: for longer I don’t dare promise, since my London bank account will sink to nothing, like S’s, and I don’t know how much I shall have available in America. Stay in London if you prefer; in the summer, if all goes normally, I rather expect to go to London myself, with the complete M.S. of The Last Puritan; and then we can make new and I hope pleasanter plans for the future Yours affly G.S. 1
Strong’s Italian chauffeur.
To George Sturgis 9 October 1933 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Houghton) Oct. 9, 1933.
HÔTEL ROYAL DANIELI VENEZIA
Dear George If between now and Christmas you have one thousand dollars of mine that you don’t know how to invest, I wish you would send it to me in the form of an ordinary cheque, which I could deposit to the credit of my London account. For my ordinary expenses I will continue to draw about $500 a month on my letter of credit, which will last until March or April. But as I have told you more than once, my wee/ ak point now is my London bank account, on which heavy demands are being made by my friends and by urgent calls for subscriptions, charities, etc, while my earned income, by which that account is fed, is not what it used to be. However, I have enough for the moment, only the prospect of Christmas
5:54
The Letters of George Santayana
is rather alarming, and my account might fall to what Strong’s is, according to his own report, namely £2. Strong is almost ruined, and has had to stop Cory’s allowance; also ceased to help Miller, an old colleague of mine at Harvard who is penniless and unemployed: so that both now depend on me. Hence these tears. I had a nice summer at Cortina, and my month in Venice has been pleasant also. Next week I return to the Hotel Bristol in Rome. Pinchetti, the proprietor has promised to reduce my rent; but I don’t know how much. If it seems still too extravagant, I won’t go to another place in Rome, but leave early in the Spring and try the Riveria, where, if I found the right quarters, I might perhaps settle down for good, as there one can stay all the year round Yours affly G.S.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 13 October 1933 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome, after October 20. Oct. 13, 1933. HÔTEL ROYAL DANIELI VENEZIA
Dear Cory While S. was here—he staid just a week and seemed to like it—I asked him for your essay,1 and read it twice. There is nothing essential in it that I should find fault with; but the general impression, as yet, is one of suspense, and I should like to see the rest before saying anything about it. In one place, for a moment, I felt a doubt about the description you give of “images” and “projection”; but on second reading I saw that this was going to be explained more fully in the sequel, when no doubt it will come out all right. I know how dreadfully hard it is to use terms—necessarily figurative—so as not to convey the wrong impression to another mind, and start some hopeless misunderstanding; and you probably are more in the swim than I, and can feel how language will be interpreted. What I feared, in that passage, was that you were conceiving “images” as resident in the brain and then “projected” upon the object: but what is in
1933–1936
5:55
the brain can only be a movement or strain of sorts, not the pictorial i—— mpre— ssion appearance given in perception. This is an essence which, at least according to my theory, is nowhere and has no existence: even the intuition of it hardly exists in the brain, although it is rooted there. The whole affair is more electrical and self-transforming than traditional psychology with its “ideas” is apt to conceive. Have you heard of a German philosopher named Martin Heidegger?2 I have been reading, in my Spanish review—which is first class!—an article of his on “Nothing” which is wonderful. He is a Hegelian3 but original, and very intuitive. Romantic introspection or soliloquy made extraordinarily accurate. The Spinoza book is out at last: also the American edition of Some Turns of Thought. I have so far received only one letter of thanks, but expect others and probably some reviews. I return to Rome on Friday night, Oct. 20, to my old rooms—not those you know but those I had last year. The price is reduced by 40 lire a day, which is something. Yours affly G.S. 1
Cory had been working on “Perception and Knowledge” for several months (Years, 114). 2 Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), a major thinker of the twentieth century, created a system of thought which has been labeled atheistic existentialism. His best-known work is Sein und Zeit (Halle: M. Neimeyer, 1927), translated as Being and Time. 3 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), a German, formulated an influential idealistic philosophy. His idealism welded together a world view with theories of ethics, aesthetics, history, politics, and religion.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 19 October 1933 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Venice, Oct. 19, 1933 Dear Cory The /iIntroduction1 is—strange as it may seem—a revelation to me. I feel as if I had been doing your philosophical vocation an injustice. Your insight, your aptitude for speculation, I have always felt; but I thought it was something incidental, a poetic gift, rather than any genuine or settled curiosity of your own about philosophical questions. The sap of my own philosophy has long been rather scanty for the size of the tree; there are a few green sprouts still peeping out here and there; but the branches as
5:56
The Letters of George Santayana
a whole are rather black and dry, and the inside hollow. Perhaps for this reason I didn’t feel, as I should have, all the youthful vigour and tightness of your own stem. Excellent. With this determination and modest enthusiasm you must go ahead. There is no question about it. Write your last section, and let us have the thing printed as soon as possible. The style of your Introduction, too, seems to be better and easier than that of the paper itself. The fact that it was written in an hour may account for it: also, of course, the warmth of a personal pronouncement. I am sending you back the copy, in case it may be convenient to have it. I have marked one split infinitive. I am not sure that I felt the difficulty in your paper that S. speaks of— that you don’t complete your expression of your ideas. Sometimes it is necessary to reread in order to avoid a doubt as to your meaning: for instance, in your letter to me now, replying to my question about images in the brain, you justify your position by the fact that in memory much the same images reappear. A carping critic might infer that you were putting the memory-images into the head, since they are evidently not in the environment of the body. But, as I said, it is the roots of the images in all cases that are in the brain, in the psyche; the fireworks explode there; but the image is only in the mind’s eye. This is what you think: but you haven’t expressed it unequivocally enough for a person to understand you who in not already in the know. At least, that is what I fear, and what I suppose S. meant. When I read your paper I took notes, and noticed a good many little things that I should have expressed differently, partly verbal, partly temperamental. For instance, you use ‘commence” three times in the essay and once in the introduction: isn’t “begin” almost always better? Then you have a note in which you curse out somebody unmercifully: it seems to me a mistake, because the reader won’t think any the worse of the other fellow for that evident violence, but may become distrustful of you. There were also several phrases, and one whole short paragraph, explaining what you meant to do or not to do. I should leave them out, and simply do the thing without talking about it. But, most important of all, I had some difficulty at the beginning in discovering just what the “dilemma” was, and just what were its two horns. This may be only an effect of my tired head, or of paraphr / g could—graphing: but you might see if the think n’t be made plainer. All this, however, is a mere confession of my personal instinct kicking here and there against the pricks. It happens to me when I read almost any contemporary author; and there is no reason why
1933–1936
5:57
you shouldn’t prefer your own ways. It is you that are writing, not I; and very likely you are more in harmony with what your reader would think natural and clear than I should be. It depends a little on who the reader is. Not everybody can be expected to like any one writer. Yours affly, G. S. P.S. I leave tomorrow for Rome. Second P.S. on p. 5 P.S. I forgot to say that your way of referring to me in the Introduction is most gratifying: a high tribute and just; yet I am not altogether content, because you don’t look far enough. I think I say in the book (Scep. & An. F.) that the scepticism is never to be absolutely forgotten or renounced: it is meant to stay by you, to be one of the foundations of your spiritual life. Criticism, scepticism is the ascetic discipline of the intellect, just as important and necessary for a true philosopher as ascetic disp /cipline of the passions or of mundane interests, such as patriotism or ambition. It was by no means merely as an artifice, to prepare an artificial reconstruction of knowledge, that I introduced scepsis: it was as a permanent cathartic for intellectual illusion. So that what you complain of as an unpleasant aftertaste is the liberating hemlock of true philosophy. But you say that philosophy, for you, is epistemology. In that case, of course scepticism would be merely by-play or a game of hide and seek. 1 Cory intended to write a little book called An ABC of Epistemology, but the project was never realized. The introduction was published as “The Realism of Common Sense,” Philosophy 31 (5 July 1934): 373–77. See Years, 114.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 28 October 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Oct. 28, 1933 Dear Cory Just a line to send you your cheque and say I am glad the first part of your essay is off your hands. I know what a relief that is. Although in the morning I still work on the novel, my mind, since I got back to Rome and my books, has been full of Bergson and Early Christianity, on which I may end by writing two essays. The Spinoza
5:58
The Letters of George Santayana
address is now to be had in off-prints, but they sent me only 10. If I succeed in getting more, you shall have one Yous affly G.S.
To George Sturgis 8 November 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 8, 1933 Dear George Thank you for the draft for £211:12:10. I wasn’t in such a great hurry, and expected simply a cheque for $1000, which B. S. & Co- would have accepted, as they do all the cheques I get from America. But this way of sending the money is just as well, if it hasn’t caused you extra trouble. My landlord has taken about 25% off my rent, which is not to be despised; he also offered me my old suite—the pale blue small room that you may remember—but I couldn’t make up my mind to go back to that, after having spent two seasons in these larger and more lively quarters. I would rather leave the hotel and Rome altogether, and settle down, perhaps in the Riveria, where I could remain all the year round without further need of travelling. In spite of the reduction of 25%, I am paying more for my rooms this year than last, counting in American money, since I am losing in exchange more than 35% on the dollar. During the winter I shall therefore—if the exchange remains as it is—require fully $500 a month; but if after I get your yearly account I see that this is more than I can afford, it will be quite simple to leave Rome and go, say, to Nice or Monaco or even Rapallo, where I could get a nice room and bathroom for a much more moderate sum; as this summer, for instance, at Cortina, where I was perfectly comfortable. I will write to Mercedes1 explaining the reduction in her allowance; but I think she quite understands. Strong is not absolutely ruined: he said he might count this year on $5000 and perhaps more: but he used to have $25,000 a year, the income of something over half a million which his wife left him. Besides, he hopes that some of his securities will begin to pay dividends again later, and bring his income up again to say $10,000, on which he could keep up his villa and motor, as he leads a very quiet life and has few small expenses. His daughter, if she weren’t always head over ears in debt, would have
1933–1936
5:59
$100,000 a year: and I think I told you that this winter she is to live with her father—a nice place for the children—and pay all the running expenses, so that he can actually save. But how horrid for an invalide and a man supposed to be rolling in wealth, to find himself cramped! But the times are out of joint. Yesterday I heard that my young friend Philip Chetwynd, Augusta Robinson’s younger son,2 had [across ] thrown himself in front of a train in a tube station in London, and been killed, simply because he couldn’t find anything to do. He was 27. Yours affly [across text] G.S. 1
Mercedes Ruiz de la Escalera e Ipparraguirre (b. c. 1855), who never married, was regarded as a member of the Santayana family. Her parents were Doña Victorina (Santayana’s mother’s life-long friend) and Don Toribio, a retired army officer. After leaving America permanently in 1912 Santayana lived, during March and April of that year, in her home in Madrid. She owned a seaside summer house in Galicia, at Bayona near Vigo. In 1929 the town council of Vigo proposed her name to the Spanish government for an award of distinction because of the evening schools for workingmen that she founded. She was a devout Catholic, dedicated to her friends, and an active philanthropist. 2 Augusta Robinson, sister of Santayana’s friend, Moncure Robinson, was married to Philip Chetwynd. Their younger son was Philip Chetwynd Jr.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 13 November 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Rome, Nov. 13, 1933
Dear Cory The opening of your Fourth Section is lively and clear: a word which was ringing in my ears as I read was “virtual”: common-sense knowledge is virtual knowledge, virtually true.1 This is another word for symbolic and symbolical, but perhaps less mysterious and not so cryptical in sound. Yes, I like the opening; and instead of throwing your nice carbon copy away, I enclose it, in case it may be useful. The antics of the dollar are very alarming: but I got $1000 transferred to London some time ago, getting £211 for them, expressly to replenish my account in view of your allowance, and make it safe for you at least until the Spring. My nephew George Sturgis writes that “we are still solvent”, so that when Roosevelt has had his fling we may perhaps be able to start life afresh with a sense of security. An idea has occurred to me that I submit to you, not as a desire exactly on my part, but simply to see if it pleases you. Would you like to join me
5:60
The Letters of George Santayana
in the Spring in the Riviera or even at Rapallo, with a view of looking for quarters—either in a small hotel or in an apartment, where I might establish myself for good—somewhere where I could remain all the year round, and have all my books with me? Strong, who seems to have understood that I don’t mean to go often again to the villa (especially now that he is hard up and has his grandchildren with him) actually suggested that I should remove the books I have at his house: and I shouldn’t be sorry to have them back, if I had where to put them. It is a part of my idea that you should spend as much of your time with me in these proposed quarters as you chose or found convenient: and for that reason, as well as for your judgement about particular places, I should like your advice.2 For instance, does Rapallo really appeal to you, is it warm enough in winter for my catarrh, and wouldn’t it be too small and tiresome for living in for ever? My own feeling is that Nice or Monaco (almost Monte Carlo but just not quite) would be best: because I could still amuse myself in cafés and even at the opera, and pass from monastic solitude to the vulgar world at five minutes notice. Besides, French after all is an easier language for me than Italian, though ideally I prefer Italy. Beal (whose taste is excellent) has recommended the Villa Charlotte, a small hotel [across ] up in the old town of Monaco. I feel tempted to try it in March or April, and spend the summer there if it proves satisfactory. Yours affly G.S. 1
“I at once settled down to work in earnest on my ABC of Epistemology, but there was a point of terminology that fretted me. I wanted a term to hit off the kind of knowledge that is appropriate for our rough-and-ready commerce with material things—a term to distinguish the ‘know how’ of active experience from both the more detailed information won by the scientist … and the truly ideal certainty of deductive reasoning. … [Santayana] suggested a term [virtual knowledge] that I liked and adopted” (Years, 117). 2 “In Bournemouth my life had assumed at last a definite pattern, and the idea of being separated from [Mrs. Margaret Degen Batten, later his wife] was intolerable. So I only wrote a noncommital reply and hoped, for the time being, that he would not be upset by my lack of enthusiasm” (Years, 119).
1933–1936
To Sterling Power Lamprecht 15 November 1933 • Rome, Italy
5:61
(MS: Amherst)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Nov. 15, 1933
Dear Mr. Lamprecht1 Thank you very much for sending me your article,2 and even more for troubling your head so much about my lucubrations. If you took them more lightly perhaps you would find them less aggravating. I don’t mean that they haven’t any serious intention, but that their serious intention would be intercepted if the form were not explicitly poetical, I mean, explicitly subject to the human perspective which nature has imposed on us, whether we accept it or not. A part of this poetic or human mist is the irony and the moral pathos without which any human consideration of such large issues would, I think, be pedantic For instance, the whole Life of Reason (as I explain in the Preface to the Second edition) was written with an eye to describing experience, not the cosmos. It was inspired partly by Greek ethics and partly by modern psychology and critical philosophy. When I say that the ideas of sense are the true particulars, I mean, not in the universe, but in the mind only: and the cosmos (i.e. the idea of the cosmos) is a construction out of these, and in that sense a “fiction”. But I never meant that this mental fiction had no physical object, which it described in human terms. I assumed that it had; and this you observe yourself, quite fairly. But you are also right in feeling that I was rather carried away, at that time, by a kind of humanism and liked to degrade, or exalt, all things into the human notions of them, and the part they played, as counters, in the game of thought. It was a modern attitude which I hope I have outgrown—“Schlecht und Modern”, as Goethe says, or Mephistopheles.3 So in the Dialogues in Limbo, you must allow me a little dramatic latitude. “Normal madness” is satiricalx: it is a joke; but Democritus was the laughing philosopher. Moreover, my position is that of The Stranger, which Democritus4 disowns. –[ See pp. 84—88. Also in the Realm of Matter, the Preface, and the passage against “Egyptian atoms”]–. Democritus, having thought he discovered “Reality”, thought he must worship it. I am in
5:62
The Letters of George Santayana
that respect a disciple of his enemy Socrates, and worship only the beautiful and the good. It would be useless for me to try to explain myself about naturalism v.s. Scepticism: I should be only repeating what seem to you my ambiguities. But I will say one thing. By “given” I don’t mean extant,or met with, but ^ ^ possessed within the synthesis of apperception. Tables and chairs are not “given”; they are posited by animal faith. I am afraid this use of words was unfortunate and contrary to the inveterate practice of people nowadays. Perhaps you might catch my position if you asked yourself whether the minds of others (mine, for instance) were “given” to you or not. They are given dramatically to your social imagination, to your practical trust: but ^ ^ the actual datum in your own mind that names them is only an essence ^ ^ given to you as in a dream and probably not [across ] exemplified again ^ ^ in their innocent persons. Yours sincerely GSantayana [across page three ] xI might have said “normal inspiration”, = animal faith 1 Sterling Power Lamprecht (b. 1890) attended Williams College, Union Theological Seminary, and Columbia University (Ph.D., 1918). He taught philosophy at the University of Illinois and at Amherst. 2 “Naturalism and Agnosticism in Santayana,” Philosophy 30 (1933): 561–64. 3 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was a German poet, dramatist, and novelist. Mephistopheles is the destructive tempting spirit in Goethe’s play, Faust (1808 and 1832). Mephistopheles helps rejuvenate Faust and promises to show him “the small world” of personal feeling and experience, and “the great world” of history, politics, and culture. “Schlecht und Modern!” (bad and modern) is part of a line spoken by Faust to Mephistopheles. 4 A materialist, the Greek philosopher Democritus (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.) held that the world was made up of tiny particles, imperceptible to the sense but indivisible and indestructible. The true nature of things can be discovered only by thought, for sense perceptions are confusing.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 20 November 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS postcard: Columbia)
Rome, Nov. 20, 1933 Have just ordered Eliot’s book:1 it will take some time to reach you, but I am glad to hear of its existence, and to be stimulated to read it. I am deep in Bergson and in the “Perplexities of New Testament Criticism”, (How is that for a title?) but have returned during these last days, in the morning,
1933–1936
5:63
to Oliver2 & Mario.—Nijhoff at The Hague informs me that the type of the Spinoza book has been redistributed so that no more off-prints are to be had: but he has no objection to my paper being republished after a year or two in a book of my own. That is a welcome fact: and if the Bergson & New Testament Criticism become essays, they might make another little book together.—Let me know for Dec. 1–st whether you are still at Bournemouth or back in London. I will assume Bournemouth, if I don’t hear in time. G.S. 1
T. S. Eliot’s The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933) is a collection of his Harvard lectures. 2 Oliver Alden is the protagonist of Puritan.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 27 November 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome. Nov. 27, 1933 Dear Cory Eliot’s book hasn’t yet arrived, but I have read the two reviews of it with pleasure. They are written with feeling: I will send them back to you with the book, in case you might like to reread them. Especially this “Basil de Selincourt”: who is he?1 Very penetrating to say that Eliot’s poetry hasn’t been written: but doesn’t this show that Eliot, as a poet, belongs to that truly English tribe which dislikes explicitness? That from Chaucer2 to Robert Bridges3 English poets have felt an ineffable something in nature and in the heart which outran philosophy or religion, is very true: and it also outruns language, so that Eliot hasn’t been able to write his own poetry, nor has Robert Bridges. Chaucer is different: he did write his poetry: only it had a margin or penumbra of the inexpressible, as all true poetry has: or rather, a margin or penumbra to be expressed by music, by magic, not by logical articulation. By the way in my Spanish review called Cruz y Raya (Plus and Minus) (literally “cross” and “line”) there is a very good article about l’Abbé Bremond, who has recently died.4 You know he had a theory about pure poetry which attracted a great deal of attention. My Spanish friends—I wish you could read them!—are youngish Catholics inclined to the modern, psychological, mystical, Bergsonian way of feeling; and this mystery
5:64
The Letters of George Santayana
in poetry, this miracle in every day life, is just the thing to excite their imagination. Why is La fille de Minos et de Pasiphaé5 a wonderful line, and ravishing poetry, whereas La fille de Pasiphaé et de Minos would be dull prose from a school-book? L’Abbé Bremond said that it was the Holy Ghost blowing where it listeth—or something to that effect: but I suspect there are tropes that let the current through in the brain, and tropes that don’t and that it is a matter of little orgasms in the nervous system. Yours affly G.S. 1
Basil de Selincourt (b. 1876), who wrote several books on various poets, had published “a scathing review … in the London Sunday Observer” (Years, 119). 2 Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340–1400), an English narrative poet strongly influenced by Italian literature, wrote The Canterbury Tales. He was an important figure who helped reestablish the English language as a vehicle for literature. He also introduced iambic pentameter into English verse. 3 Santayana’s “most distinguished” Oxford friend (Persons, 489), Robert Seymour Bridges (1844–1930) was made poet laureate in 1913. The quintessential English gentleman, Bridges was educated at Eton and Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He studied medicine in London but gave up practice in 1882. The philosophical poem entitled The Testament of Beauty (1929) is considered his finest work. 4 Henri Brémond (1865–1933), a French literary critic and historian, wrote Prayer and Poetry: A Contribution to Poetical Theory (London, 1927), as well as many other books on poets, poetry, and mysticism. He left the Jesuit order for a literary career, though his principal work, Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France (Paris: Bloud and Gay, 1916–33) is an eleven-volume study of religious elements in French literature. 5 This quote, “The daughter of Minos and Pasiphaë,” is from Racine’s Phèdre, Act I, line 48 (1677). In Greek mythology, Minos was the king of Crete. At his death he became a judge in the underworld. Minos was married to Pasiphaë, a daughter of the Sun. Their daughter Ariadne betrayed her father by releasing his Greek captives and marrying their leader, Theseus.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 28 November 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS postcard: Columbia)
ROME – STATUE DI MARCO AURELIO.
Rome, Nov. 28, 33 Wrote yesterday to 52, Cranley Gardens, thinking that it would be forwarded if you hadn’t returned, without losing much time, if any—Hope it will be all right.—Am sending you another batch of reviews of “Locke” etc. Notice Dawes Hicks1 and Irwin Edman.2 The Unitarian gent is lovely too. G.S.
1933–1936
5:65
1 George Dawes Hicks (1862–1941) was an editor of the Hibbert Journal: A Quarterly Review of Religion, Theology, and Philosophy (London and Boston). 2 Irwin Edman (1896–1954) received his degrees from Columbia University, where he spent his career teaching philosophy. His review of Turns appeared in New York Herald Tribune Books (29 October 1933) and in the Saturday Review of Literature (16 December 1933). Edman’s most popular book is Philosopher’s Holiday (1938).
To Henry Seidel Canby 6 December 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Beinecke)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Dec. 6, 1933 Dear Mr. Canby1 “The Genteel Tradition of Bay” was published in 1931 by Scribner, and I see that the fly-leaf says: “Copyright by Charles Scribner’s Sons” and “Copyright by Time, Inc.” whatever that may mean. It was also published as a pamphlet, by “The Adelphi” in England, for 1 shilling. You will understand better than I what all this entails: and whether the fact that the articles appeared originally in your review gives you a right to republish them.2 For myself, I should of course be most happy to have you do so, since I think being known widely is always profitable in the end: but Scribner may be of a different opinion and you had better consult them. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Henry Seidel Canby (1878–1961) received his Ph.D. in 1905 from Yale and taught English there for more than twenty years. In 1924 he helped found the Saturday Review of Literature and served for twelve years as its first editor. Under his direction, this journal became the country’s leading literary weekly. Canby wrote books about American authors and the autobiographical American Memoir (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947). 2 No later publication has been located.
5:66
The Letters of George Santayana
To Evelyn Tindall 9 December 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Texas)
Hotel Bristol Dec. 9, 1933 Dear Miss Tindall Here, at last, are nine more chapters of my book.1 I have a few more copied, but still in need of revision, and I will bring them when Part IV is finished, which will not be for some months. Please take all the time you like about this work. There is absolutely no hurry. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Puritan.
To Wendell T. and Mary Potter Bush 16 December 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Dec. 16, 1933. Dear Mr. Bush and Mrs. Bush Your very kind cablegram arrived punctually this morning and was almost the only exceptional event to mark the bitter sweet occasion of having fulfilled the days allotted to man.1 By reason of strength, or of equilibrium, we may all hope to reach fore —urscore, and not leave anything undone that we ought to have done. In her recent very nice letter anent the little Locke book, Mrs. Bush said you, Mr. Bush, were not very well. I hope you are all right again. I wish I could have sent you my Spinoza lecture as well as the Locke, but the big book is too expensive for these days, and they have redistributed the type, so that no off-prints are available. However, the Dutch publisher is willing that after a year or two I should republish my paper in a book; and I may have two other essays concerning religion written by that time, to make up a volume, which you shall duly receive. I have two theological bees in my bonnet: one the perplexities of New Testament criticism, reawakened in my mind by the book of Couchoud2 that Mrs. Bush lent me; and the other Bergson’s remarkable (and unforseen) completion of
1933–1936
5:67
his system, with almost a conversion to Catholicism! I suppose you have read his “Les deux Sources de la Religion et de la Morale”. I don’t agree with him any more than formerly, but now I like him better. I see him not as a shy German idealist and benighted vitalist, but as an isolated mystical intuitive mind, taking infinite pains to cut a good figure in the academic world and before the modern public, but secretly vowed to a private revelation. It is most interesting, pathetic, and worthy of admiration for the his constancy & astuteness, and for the difficulty of the task accom— ^ ^ plished: I have also read Loisy’s criticism, with which I agree, except that his own position—a sort of Comtian positivism3—seems prosaic and inadequate. Besides, I have gone over T. S. Eliot’s Harvard lectures—disappointing and ill-planned, but with some good things in them. I am waiting for the yearly account of my money-matters to see whether I can continue to live here. If not, I meditate moving to the Riviera, where it would be possible to stay all the year round and gather all my books once more about — them me. Many are at Strong’s and some at his daughter’s house in Saint Germain. Strong, by the way, is very hard hit by the crisis—much worse than I—and is “taking boarders”, though as yet only his two grandchildren and their nurses. With best wishes for the New Years, always sincerely yours GSantayana 1
Santayana’s seventieth birthday was 16 December 1933. “The days of our age are threescore years and ten; and though men be so strong that they come to fourscore years: yet is their strength then but labour and sorrow; so soon passeth it away, and we are gone.” Prayer Book (1662), 90.19. 2 Paul Louis Couchoud (1879–1959), a French scholar, denied the existence of a historical Jesus. He wrote many books on the Gospels and Christianity including Le Problème de Jésus et les origenes du Christianisme (1932). 3 Isidore Auguste Marie François Comte (1798–1857), a French philosopher, advocated the theory of positivism. This philosophy only admits knowledge gained by scientific method as real or positive. Comte hoped that, through the use of such methods rather than through idealistic appeal to absolute principles, social reform might be achieved.
5:68
The Letters of George Santayana
To Rafael Sastre González 16 December 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Sastre) Hotel Bristol, Roma 16 de Diciembre 19331
Querido Rafael2 He esperado algunos dias antes de escribir, mandando el recuerdo de Navidad para los chicos, hasta ver como terminaba el conato de insurrección en España.3 Parece que se ha restablecido la tranquilidad, y que la tropa en general se ha portado bien. Era lo esencial; de otra manera se podía haber repetido en España el desastre de Rusia . . Y hubiera sido peor, porque en España hay tradiciones y costumbres y monumentos muy superiores a lo que existía en el imperio de los Zares, y destrozándolo todo se hubiera perdido mucho más. Otra nube en el horizonte, bastante negra, es lo que ocurre en los Estados Unidos.4 No creo que llegue a ser la ruina completa del Capitalismo; nos quedará algo, y yo, que hoy cumplo los 70 años, podré ir tirando en lo que me quede de vida; pero lo siento por los amigos, y especialmente por vosotros, que teneis familia, y otras obligaciones. Lo peor por el momento es no saber con qué [illegible]se puede contar. Yo hasta ahora no he tenido que privarme de nada, gracias a Dios y a la herencia de Josefina, pero no hay seguridad en el porvenir. Hace tiempo que no tengo noticias de vosotros. Las ultimas, excelentes, fueron de Pepe.5 ¿Y Luis, se vuelve a casar? ¿Ha encontrado una persona de confianza que se encargue de sus niños? A los tuyos y a Adela muchos cariñosos recuerdos y un abrazo de tu antiguo compañero Jorge 1
Translation: Dear Rafael I have waited several days before writing, and sending along the Christmas remembrance for the children, until I saw how the attempted insurrection turned out in Spain. It seems that calm has been restored and that in general the troops behaved well. That was the essential thing; otherwise, the disaster that happened in Russia could have been repeated in Spain. And it would have been worse, because in Spain there are traditions and customs and monuments much superior to those that existed in the empire of the Czars, and with the destruction of it all the loss would have been much greater. Another cloud on the horizon, quite black, is what is happening in the United States. I don’t think it will come to the complete ruin of Capitalism; we shall have something left, and I, who am 70 years old today, shall be able to get along for the years I have left; but I am sorry about it for my friends, and especially for you, who have family and other obligations. The worst thing for now is not knowing what one can count on.
1933–1936
5:69
So far I have not had to do without anything, thank God and thanks to the inheritance from Josephine, but one cannot be sure of the future. I have not had news of you for some time. The last, excellent news was Pepe’s. And Luis, is he getting married again? Has he found someone he can trust to take care of his children? Many fond regards to yours and to Adela, and an embrace from your former comrade 2 Rafael Sastre González (d. 1940) married Adelaida “Adela” Hernández. Their children include María Josefa, Adelaida, and Rafael. 3 This is a reference to the Anarchist-Syndicalist revolts that broke out in Spain on 8 December and lasted several days. These were a result of a conservative landslide in the November national elections. The revolts took the form of general strikes, attacks on the Civil Guard, burning of churches and convents, and wrecking an express train. A state of alarm was proclaimed. Due to the loyalty of the police and army the insurrection was quickly put down. 4 The United States was in the throes of the Great Depression. Opposition to the capitalist system was increasing. Santayana disapproved of the liberal social and economic New Deal policies. 5 José “Pepe” Sastre González was the youngest son of Celedonio Sastre.
To Evelyn Tindall 16 December 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Texas)
Hotel Bristol, Dec. 16. ’33 Dear Miss Tindall I am sorry to hear that you may have to leave Rome. I may have to leave also, if the dollar continues to fall. I have three more chapters almost ready, and will leave them at your place in a few days, and when you return them you might enclose the account for your work so far; then perhaps later I may have more chapters, or possibly articles on other subjects. Yours sincerely GSantayana
5:70
The Letters of George Santayana
To Mr. Wallack 16 December 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Unknown)
Dec. 16. 1933 HOTEL BRISTOL ROME
Dear Mr. Wallack1 It is twenty-one years since I was last in the U.S. and I am sorry that I haven’t in mind any materials for framing the compliment to Mrs. Deland2 in which you ask me to join. Yours truly GSantayana 1
Unidentified. Margaret Wade Campbell (Mrs. Lorin Deland, 1857–1945), a novelist, taught at Hunter College in New York City. 2
To Charles Augustus Strong 21 December 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Rome, Dec. 21, 1933 Dear Strong I am very glad to hear from you and to know that your family party is going on happily. You will doubtless have a lovely Christmas tree, and much jollification. I hope nothing will happen to make either of the children end by crying, as usually happens on great occasions. Please give Margaret and George, for themselves and the children, my best New Year’s wishes. And will you ask George if he received two numbers of a Spanish review called Cruz y Raya (Plus & Minus) and, if so, whether he would like me to send him more copies. It is written by intellectual Catholics and I find it most interesting and instructive. They are full of German philosophy. Not long ago there was an article on “Nothingness” by Martin Hedegger, beautifully translated. They also translated my “Long Way Round to Nirvana.”1 I haven’t seen Lovejoy’s retort to your criticisms. It isn’t surprising that he should be recalcitrant. We are too old to learn much, but not too old to give ourselves away, and I should like to see his article, and your reply to it. You know that I don’t like to engage in controversy, and even when
1933–1936
5:71
I am not concerned in the debate, I have little hope of any result being attained in that direction. But it would be interesting to analyze the opposed positions, and see if the presuppositions of the two might not be unearthed. That is what I am trying to do with Bergson. I have reread Loisy’s commentary, and liked it better than at first. But he seems to me far from putting his finger on the nerve-centre concerned, which I think this new book of Bergson’s enables us to discover. He has always been a shy, sensitive, secret supernaturalist, protecting that almost unmentionable position by layers, as thick as possible, of acceptable science and psychology, so that the official savants of the Third Republic2 might take him seriously. If he had given himself away at the beginning, as he has now, nobody would have listened to him. But now the climate is changed. The Catholics are respected and unashamed; and after all, he is not quite as disconcerting as they are. But his position, I think, is really much weaker, [across ] very weak indeed, when you simplify it. It is the hypostasis of a private moral perspective. Yours ever G.S. 1 ”A Long Way Round to Nirvana; or, Much Ado About Dying (Dial 75 [November 1923]: 435–42) was translated by Antonio Marichalar and published in Madrid as “Largo rodeo hacia el Nirvana” (Cruz y Raya 4 [ July 1933]: 67–81). 2 The Third Republic (1870–1940), a new political time period in France, officially began after the Prussians captured Napolean III. Savants is French for well-informed or experts.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 25 December 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Rome, Christmas Day, 1933 Dear Cory You may be disappointed at not getting a Xmas present this year. I haven’t forgotten that you may need new clothes, etc. and that your allowance will hardly allow you to save much for such purposes. But I am waiting for my yearly account from my nephew, and if it is not too unfavourable, I will send you something extra later, perhaps when you move to London and have to renew your feathers with the Spring. At that time, too, we can reopen the question of meeting at the Riviera for the summer. What you say about Eliot’s lectures is exactly what I felt. He wasn’t inspired. He didn’t make the subject personal enough. If he had
5:72
The Letters of George Santayana
explained why Ezra Pound1 is “magnificent”, and why he himself would prefer an illiterate public for his poetry, it might have been enlightening: and he would have had plenty of occasions to show how this newly discovered essence of living poetry, which had been running underground from Guido Cavalcanti2 to Ezra Pound, was suppressed or possibly occasionally burst out unintentionally even in the interval. But Eliot is entangled in his own coils. How can he publish such an indecent article as that of Ezra Pound in this number of the Criterion—which I send today? And how can he suffer the crudities and absurdities of the article by Hoffman Nickeson to pass uncorrected?3 This article is interesting as a picture of Babbit;4 but grotesque as an exhibition of critical judgement. If your essay is so long, I can’t have seen more than a small part of it. By all means turn it into a book: that will give you room to say everything that it is in your heart to say, and without limitation to a particular public. A first book—especially by an intuitive person—is apt to contain the seeds of all his future development. There may be some difficulty in finding a publisher, but that would be surely overcome in the end. Your book will be far superior to many that appear and are well reviewed. Fourteen more chapters of The Last Puritan are finished and being typed. Shall I send you one copy to Bournemouth, or will the MS merely encumber your luggage, which must already be rather a nuisance? When the whole is done, I count on reading it all over with you, or asking you to send me your notes on it, before finally sending it to Constable and getting his opinion about immediate publication. There is therefore no need that you should bother about it now, if other things are on your mind I haven’t forgotten your comment on my “whiskered” phrases, like “acquatic exercise”. I am trying to humanize them: but sometimes they are meant humorously, [across ] and sometimes justified (when the author is speaking) for the sake of variety, rhythm, or colour. After all every word Yours affly has a proper use sometimes. G. S. 1 Ezra Loomis Pound (1885–1972), an American poet, editor, and critic, lived in Europe after 1907 and was criticized for his fascist activities in Italy in World War II. After he was tried for treason against the United States, he was confined in a mental hospital in Washington D.C. from 1945 to 1958. After his release, he returned to Italy. 2 Guido Cavalcanti (c. 1255–1300) was an Italian poet and a friend of Dante. His best verse is in the Canzone d’amore. 3 “Pound wrote an amusing but rather offhand review of A. E. Housman’s The Name and Nature of Poetry entitled ‘Mr. Housman at Little Bethel’ ” (Years, 120). Hoffman Nickerson (1888–1965), who graduated from Harvard in 1911, wrote on military and political topics.
1933–1936
5:73
4 Irving Babbitt (1865–1933), a critic of romanticism, advocated new humanism based on classical traditions. Norman Foerster’s (editor) Humanism and America: Essays on the Outlook of Modern Civilisation (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, Inc., 1930) contains essays by Babbitt, P. E. Moore, G. R. Elliot, and T. S. Eliot, among others.
To Boylston Adams Beal 7 January 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton) Hotel Bristol, Rome Jan. 7, 1934
Dear Boylston Thank you for your letter of Dec. 7 and for the cutting from the Harvard Register.1 Please don’t trouble about looking up those other birthday tributes: they are too much like obituary notices. Unless my “novel” should ever be finished and published, which might make a real flame burst out one way or the other, I can imagined the kindly sunset glow in which—at least in public—I shall be allowed to sink into oblivion. But I still have a string or two to my bow, which not all my American friends are aware of; I don’t mean only the “novel”, but fresh philosophic criticism and exposition. It all depends on my powers of work not failing too fast. Rome, after months of uninterrupted rain, has put on its sunny aspect with the new year, and I wish you could be here to enjoy it. I have been doing the Cicerone for two days to Lady Fortescue2—sent to me by “Elizabeth”—who is a sort of widowed Muse of tragedy, and wants me to go and live in her house at Grasse, built like a boat, and offers me the upper deck for a permanent tower of ivory. I told her that my boat must be moored by the sea; and I am thinking of trying the Villa Charlotte, recommended by you. If when George Sturgis sends my yearly account, I find that I am solvent, I shall stay here as usual until June, and stop at Monaco then. If on the contrary I find that I am living beyond my means, I shall go there earlier, and later, perhaps, to England, where the dollar seems less shrunken than it does in these parts. Best wishes for Else/ie3 and for Betty4 and her little ones. Yours ever G.S. 1
Unlocated. Unidentified. 3 Beal’s wife was the former Elsie Grew, a cousin of the Sturgis family. 4 The Beals’ daughter. 2
5:74
The Letters of George Santayana
To George Sturgis 16 January 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Jan. 16, 1934. Dear George Sooner than I expected I receive today your letter with the account for the last year. It is satisfactory, and removes any doubts which I may have had about the possibility of keeping up my mode of life, at least for the present. There is no reason why I should save, as I have been doing; and even if the dollar falls lower, if business as a whole continues as it is, or improves, I shall have more than enough for my wants. At the present rate of exchange, I need $6000 a year for my hotel bills and pocket money: then say $2000 to replenish my London bank account, for charities, books, presents, and Cory; and say another $2000 for Mercedes, Manuela1, taxes, and your commission. In all that makes $10,000: and if I continue to have an income of $15,000 there remains a good margin for accidents and good husbandry. Of course, if the dollar should be halved again in value (as I see in the papers that Mr. Roosevelt wishes to be able to do) everything would have to be reconsidered: but I hope that is not likely. My letter of credit will last until May: you might then send me another, for any amount you like, as it makes no difference, provided the timelimit corresponds. I mean, that if the letter is good only until Jan. 1st 1935, $5000 would be more than sufficient; but if it is to last longer, say until June 1–st 1935, it should be for $6000; or if good until Jan 1–st 1936, $10,000. The result of all this is that I shall remain in Rome until June, as usual, and then go either to Venice and Cortina, or to the Riviera and perhaps Paris: unless I should be tempted to try Fiuggi, in the mountains near Rome, which some people recommend and which would make a long journey unnecessary. I don’t feel any less young for having turned the corner of 70; but external evidence convinces me that I am getting old, and I find it harder to do consecutive work. I think the quality, at least in spots, is much the same, but the quantity trickles and dries up with a strange cussiedness. Perhaps it is a s well: if there were more it might be worse for my repu^^ tation.
1933–1936
5:75
We have had 69 days of rain; now a few days [across ] clear, but no severe cold; and on the whole I have kept well. Yours affly G. S. 1 Manuela Ruiz de Santayana y Zabalgoitia (c. 1868–1936), Santayana’s maiden cousin, was the daughter of Hermenegilda Zabalgoitia and Manuel Santayana (Santayana’s father’s youngest brother). See Persons, 206 and 210–11.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 20 January 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Rome, Jan. 20, 1934. Dear Cory You ask only for verbal notes on your paper, and I am sending you a few. I noticed no shoulds or woulds out of place. It is hard to draw the line between style and tone or between tone and doctrine. On the whole your paper makes a pleasant strong impression. You are the post-war young man, simple, confident, not retrospective, and in sympathy with life. I like to divide you (like ancient Gaul) into three parts:1 1–st the intuitive, poetic, warm, Irish part, which (at least for me) is the foundation of everything nd and your true self. 2– the cheeky, intelligent, but slightly low part; and rd 3– (less constitutional and I hope transitory) the American philosophical seminar part. When you have been in England you speak and move like an Englishman, and it is very becoming and (at least to me) comforting and agreeable: but evidently living and studying in England don’t make you write or think like the natives. You are, in this paper, thoroughly American in diction and manner: also in philosophy. Of course, that may be taking time by the forelock and [illegible ]ranging yourself on the win^ ^ ning side: but, like the new dollar, it is cheap. There isn’t much of No 1 Cory in this essay: there is something of N–o 2 Cory: for instance “sedentarism” and “the latent antics of the new-fangled atoms”. Also, in another way, the note on Strong and the quotation and bouquet thrown at me. “Sedentarism” is good, and brings out your argument, which I agree with: but it is cheeky. The arm-chair philosopher retains animal faith, dips his pen in the inkstand, rings his bell, and writes to his publisher. He is full of his own past and perhaps confident of immortality. But the sceptic is not sedentary: he is rather a fugitive and a wanderer; and you would have described him more intuitively if you had said that realists have holes and idealists have nests, but the sceptic has not where to lay his head.
5:76
The Letters of George Santayana
Scepticism, as I wrote to you not long ago, is an ascetic dis ci pline; that ^ ^ is why it is hated by those who hate discipline and hate asceticism: things good enough—as you suggest at the end—for Asiatics like Christ and Buddha,2 but altogether outgrown by your hundred percent Irish German Jewish American hustler. But more important is the question of personalities.* [in margin ] * I don’t quite like your references to your age, previous article, etc. You can quote yourself slyly without danger of being prose^ ^ cuted for plagiarism. Do you think Strong will like that note? And if not, why put it in? He will see well enough in the text that you have his system in mind, and are profiting by it. That is a discreet and suitable compliment, with no sting in it. And in my case, if you like that quotation, put it in (by the way, it is wellknown at Columbia, but not “much quoted” at Bournemouth); that is a perfect compliment, without further patting on the back. Your hit at Eddington3 seems to me legitimate, and clenches the argument; and the references to Whitehead and Sellars are all right in form. I wish you could explain what the latter means by “perceptual experience being intrinsic to the organic act.” Are the percepts a part of the organic process? Or is the spiritual act, the perception in the active sense, a name for the organic act of perception—behavioristically? Or is there some third way for the mind to be intrinsic to the body? Your paper is written, and you can’t rewrite it, but before you compose the book I should very much like to discuss with you certain matters in which you seem to me to argue on premisses which your own conclusions rd contradict. It is the seminar Cory 3– showing his hoof. Yours affly G.S. [across] P.S. I will write about plans and other matters next week when I send your cheque Notes on Style Page (1) line 1. “this world” or “this homely world”, used five times on this page, and also on the next. To avoid monotony there are equivalents: things round us, our surroundings, the natural environment, material objects, the field of action, etc, etc. Or do you mean the idea of the natural world? '' '' “Naive”. I suppose you are wedded to this word. But it’s not very good English—or French (which is naïf) However, it
1933–1936
5:77
belongs to the American Seminar vocabulary, and must be admitted. But sometimes you might say “ordinary”, “spontaneous”, “uncriticized”, “unquestioning”. line 9. “halted”. Seems somehow not to fit especially not to go with the classic “brevity of human life” in the next line. “To halt” is usually intransitive. Why not say “checked”, “arrested”, or “suspended”? line 10. “formulate”. Better, “make precise”. lines 17–18. “alien world” too tragic for “comes along.” I suggest: “things not on the human scale.” Pages (1)–(2) “Inquisite adult”. Is this humorous? See remarks in my letter about personal references. Page (2), line 16. “level of experience –which [ –] I call naive perception.” Here is a case where the relative pronoun helps to make the sense clearer. I don’t think it necessary in short familiar phrases which no one could misunderstand. But this sentence is rather terrible in any case. Page (3) line 11. “an ideal of –perfect] [ – knowledge.” Perhaps I don’t catch your intention; but that is itself worth clearing up. Perhaps “an ultimate ideal” lines 15–16. “and satisfy my hunger.” People don’t go shooting when hungry. This is a verbal picturesqueness without real intuitions behind it. Page (4) line 6. “Rôle”, better “part.” Page (5) line 1. You could save yourself the note by beginning: “The kind of perception made possible by instruments, and reported in statistics, etc.” Perception is not “supported” by statistics, but vice versa. I think direct intuition of things of this kind is the secret of a good vivid and strong style. The other sort of thinking at second hand is tedious. line 6. “naive percipient”. Seminar style at its worst. Why not say “plain man” or “ordinary mind” or even “common or garden thinker.” Page (8) “that kind of belief we experience” Nice illustration of relative pronoun: say either “the kind of belief we experience”, or “that kind of belief which we experience”. “is” was right. Two singular nouns separated by “or” take a singular verb.
5:78
The Letters of George Santayana
Page (10) line 18. “And just because” is not quite right. You seem to mean, “And merely because”. Page (11) line 2. “Human experience”. The “human” here doesn’t seem to be merely idle, yet you are not discussing any experience not human. Don’t you mean, “sensuous experience,” or “the experience of the senses”? Another case where direct intuition is needed. One must see what one is talking about. Page (14)I should leave out everything between line 20 “daily life” and “In my opinion”. See my letter. last line “a direct disclosure”. Dont you mean a graphic or unqualified disclosure? The least descriptive perception or reaction, e.g. a pain, is a direct disclosure of the object, as far as its presence and moral quality are concerned. 1
“Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.” Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico, I.i. Buddha, meaning the enlightened one in Sanskrit, is the title of Siddhartha Gautama (c. 563–483 B.C.), an Indian religious leader and founder of Buddhism. 3 Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) was a British astronomer and philosopher of science. 2
To John Hall Wheelock 23 January 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Jan. 23, 1934. Dear Mr. Wheelock The list of your publications in the Modern Student’s Library, in respect to philosophers, seems to include only the most distinguished dead; and it seems a too great honour to be already numbered among them.1 However, the honour won’t crush me, and I should be very glad to have such a book published. When it comes to entrusting the selection to Prof. Ralph Barton Perry, I confess it seems to me a strange choice. No doubt, you have your reasons: but couldn’t you find some one with a more poetic temperament and more feeling and subtlety? He will select all the safe, second-hand, moralistic things that I said in my earlier books: whereas it is from Soliloquies in England and Dialogues in Limbo that a temperamentally sympathetic critic would gather most of his passages.
1933–1936
5:79
There is Prof. Irwin Edman of Columbia (to take a young man) or Prof. John Irskine, if an older one is willing to take up such a work. Wouldn’t they be better? There is also Mr. Daniel Cory, who has sometimes acted as my secretary; but that would be almost like asking me to make the selection myself, which I quite understand would not be desirable, because the taste of the public, and especially the interests of the young, have to be considered. In fine, go on as you wish. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 The Philosophy of Santayana: Selections from the Works of George Santayana, edited and with an introductory essay by Irwin Edman (New York: The Modern Library, Scribner’s, 1936).
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 26 January 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome, Jan. 26, 1934. Dear Cory I take this large paper to write you a long letter about business, and projects for the rest of our mortal lives.1 My yearly account from Boston has now arrived, and is not unfavourable. If my income for 1933 was $2,000 less than for the previous year, the nominal value of the capital had increased by $20,000, which roughly might be equivalent to $1,000 income. This increase in the capital value is chiefly favourable as a sign that business has begun to improve, and that the fall in the dollar will be largely compensated by a corresponding rise in nominal values and dividends, as theory would lead one to expect. It seems, therefore, that I am not likely to have less income, in bad dollars, in the immediate future than I have at present. Very well: at present I can afford to go on living at the Bristol, and spending the summer in my usual way; and I can also afford to keep up your allowance at the present rate. Not, I am sorry to say, as I could formerly out of my earned income and perquisites, coming to B. S. & C–o: that source is now much reduced, and I have to provide out of it for books, charities, and presents to my Spanish friends; but I have warned my nephew in Boston that I shall ask for $2,000 a year to be transferred by him to my London account: and that sum, with the other receipts from publisher’s and from a legacy left me by my brother, will suffice to pro-
5:80
The Letters of George Santayana
vide for you—if things continue as they are. I count on the dollar going down a little further, to 50 cents; should it sink below that amount everything would have to be reconsidered. I therefore cannot promise to go on giving you your present allowance; but I hope to be able to do so: and, if I can, it would be a real pleasure to tide you over these years, until you see your way clear in some definite direction. Now a word about your expectations from S.2 When I see him again I mean to sound him on the subject, to make sure that he hasn’t changed his will, and also to ask him to tell you, for your guidance, exactly what his benefaction is, and on what conditions you will enjoy it—or else to authorize me to tell you, because now I am pledged to secrecy. It seems to me only fair that you should be informed: and there is no reason, that I can see, to the contrary. But perhaps an instinctive, half-conscious motive in S.’s mind for not letting you know may have been the wish to remain free to alter his arrangements: and now that his grandchildren are living with him, and his daughter and son-in-law are in terrible straits (on $100,000 a year) he may be persuaded to revoke the provision in his will by which you were to have profitted; especially as he does not see you ^ ^ or work with you now as before. That is one horrid possibility which you must be prepared to face. Another is that I should die, say, within a year or two (nothing intrinsically unlikely) and that S. should live, say, ten years more. Then, for eight or nine years, you would be left absolutely penniless. And even on S.’s death, with the legacy unchanged, the fall in the dollar (for the thing is expressed in dollars) and other circumstances concerned, [illegible ] might — find reduce [illegible ] what you ultimately received [illegible ]to hardly enough to live on single, not to say married. As to marriage, your account of your friend3 made the idea seem attractive and reasonable: only I wish her £10 a month were £1,000 or at least £100. As to becoming a British subject,4 you know that my own feelings are not shocked at such ideas, although I have never myself wished to change my legal nationality. But giving up your American citizenship might make a bad impression in certain quarters, and you might lose your legacy. The terms of it rather presuppose (though not explicitly, I think) that you will always be an American and a philosopher. The fact that I have money enough for the moment to keep things going as usual has made me rather disinclined to try any new place next summer, and I feel like returning to Cortina, doubtless for a last season.
1933–1936
5:81
The novel advances so slowly (though I work on it every morning) that it will hardly be finished this winter: I shall need, at least, the whole summer as well. Cortina is good for that purpose. And I believe the joy of having it completed at last, would be in itself a great stimulus for taking up the other remaining books. You needn’t therefore consider [across ] my movements in deciding upon yours, but make whatever arrangements for the summer suit you best. I think you wouldn’t be better off anywhere than in England. Yours affly G.S. 1
“I had also written him … hint[ing] that I had possibly found a woman that I would like to marry. Beyond that I did not dare go at the time. But there were certain questions that had to do with my material security that I wanted him to clarify if possible. In the first place, assuming that he really wanted to retain me as a part-time secretary and companion to appeal to in any emergency, were his financial resources in the United States sufficient to enable him to do so, and for how long?” (Years, 124). 2 “I had gathered … that Strong had for years planned to establish in his will some kind of fellowship, or fund for fellowships, and that, furthermore, I was the type of person he especially had in mind … for possible election” (Years, 124). 3 Cory and Margaret “Margot” Degen Batten (1900–1995), an English divorcée, lived together for several years (mainly in Bournemouth) before their 23 April 1940 civilceremony marriage in Vevey, Switzerland. Santayana did not learn of their marriage until June 1944. 4 “I had informed Santayana that it would be necessary for me to become a British subject if I were compelled to seek employment in the United Kingdom” (Years, 126).
To George Sturgis 28 January 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Jan. 28, 1934 HOTEL BRISTOL ROME
Dear George I see in this morning’s paper that the £ is now momentarily worth again less than $5. Such a moment would be favourable for sending me another $1000 for my London bank-account. There is no hurry, I still have a decent balance at B. S. & C–o ’s; but as I wrote in my recent letter, I shall have to ask you to send me about $2000 a year to keep it going, as my earned income is now very much reduced and I don’t like, unless it is necessary, to stop helping the people, and buying the books, etc., that I have usually provided for through that channel.
5:82
The Letters of George Santayana
And talking of helping people, I am a little troubled about Mercedes. She squeals. I sent her her usual Xmas present, but I wonder if, considering her age (77, I think) and our old family ties, we ought not to see that she is not made uncomfortable in her last years. She is a little exacting, I know, and not (like Manuela) willing to be modest; but she keeps up two houses and travels between them, and it would be unpleasant for her to be too much reduced. If when you next send her her draft, you see that she is gets/ ting very much less in pesetas than formerly, perhaps you ^ ^ ^ ^ could add a little out of my account; say enough to make her quarterly income not less than 2,000 pesetas. This, as well as the $1000 for B. S. & C–o is of course on the supposition that I have the funds required in a liquid form, and that you can draw on them without upsetting your plans. Yours affly GSantayana
To Mary Annette Beauchamp Russell 31 January 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Huntington) Jan. 31–st 1934
HOTEL BRISTOL ROME
Dear Lady Russell You must have thought it very odd that I never answered your notes sending me so agreeable a messenger in the person of Lady Fortescue; but a day or two after her visit I was taken ill—in consequence, apparently, of an injection given me to keep me well—and when I recovered, that episode had lost its actuality, and I let the days pass without counting them. It was great fun looking at the A B C of Rome with so appreciative a new-comer: if we had had more time and better weather, after I discovered what sort of things she liked best, we could have had even more interesting afternoons. I was sorry to see, by various little indications, that she was worried about many things: it is inevitable for most people in these days, and I hope she may sail before long into a tropical calm. Perhaps she would hate a tropical calm; but I should say that, — offor a time, it would be good for her. She said a new book of yours was to come out soon.1 Faute de mieux2 I shall look forward to hearing your voice through that telephone. Yours sincerely GSantayana
1933–1936
5:83
1
The Jasmine Farm (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co, 1934). For want of something better (French).
2
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 2 February 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 2, 1934 Dear Cory I am glad you are so festive, in your new shoes, on account of my momentary solvency. The dollar has so far refused to come down quite to 60 cents, and as you say, things in general seem to be improving a little. If there are dollars enough, it makes no difference how little they may be worth: only I can’t get over the shock of thinking that 1000 lire are now almost 100 dollars, and my weekly hotel bill is something more than that! I enclose an absurd letter I have received.1 If it would amuse you to answer it in my name, do so. You can style yourself my secretary, and make me sound truly grand. I also enclose another article of Edman’s.2 Not quite so nice, I think, as the one on Turns of Thought It is a very good idea of yours to write occasionally to S. and to prove— what is the fact—that you are a devoted philosophy/er. And that leads me to explain, in a word or two, what I felt in your essay to be an inconsistency between the beginning and the end. You come to the conclusion that pictorial experience is pictorial—you will understand what I mean by that. But you propose a problem at first which does not arise, if that conclusion is true: namely, the problem of the comparative simplicity of experience in contrast with the physical structure either of nature at large or of the human body in particular. Why on earth should feeling or perception not be simple? Why should the toothache picture the tooth or the cavity in it, or the histology of the brain? It doesn’t, and it can’t: and the idea that we must somehow explain why it doesn’t is based on a gnostic illusion, to the effect that perception is not sensation in the organ of perception but miraculous divine intuition of things as they are in themselves. As you say, that is at best an ideal for the intellect: we should like to know things thoroughly, to imagine what they must be in themselves, as we like to enact dramatically what we suppose may be the feelings of other people. But when the object is not another human mind, that ideal
5:84
The Letters of George Santayana
is unattainable, and rather foolish: because the function of ordinary perception is not sympathetic but utilitarian. [across ] This is only a hint: the constitutional uselessness of the mental side of things is another point important in my view, but perhaps better left alone. G.S. 1
Unlocated. Unlocated.
2
To Charles Augustus Strong 4 February 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Rome, Feb. 4, 1934 Dear Strong Miller sent me a copy of Mind with his article.1 I agree that it is excellent: I was surprised at so much strength in M. who is often a little mincing. As I wrote to him, with my thanks, he deals convincingly with the moral confusion of the indeterminists –after [ all, this has been done a thousand times in the old controversies–] but he will not convince them because they have other reasons in petto:2 1–st not to make God responsind ble for themselves; 2– to project into nature the sense of uncertainty and miracle. So, don’t bring Mind when you come, but do please bring me the whole of Lovejoy’s arguments and your replies, because I haven’t seen them. My yearly account from my nephew was rather encouraging: I am still living within my income, and able to keep Cory going, although I am not sure whether it is for his good altogether. You know, I suppose, that he is planning a book, and it will be an indication of his real power to accomplish something. Not being forced to economize for the moment, I may put off the excursion to the Riviera, and go again next summer to Cortina, where I know the ground and have fixed habits—good in old age. But we will talk of this when you are here. I haven’t had any cough or catarrh, but I did have a little fever for a few days a month ago, due apparently to influenza arrested, in other respects, by the inoculation which I undergo regularly for that purpose Yours ever G.S.
1933–1936
5:85
1 “Free Will as Involving Determination and Inconceivable Without It” was published under Miller’s pseudonym, R. E. Hobart, (43 [ January 1934]: 1–27]). 2 At heart (Italian).
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 6 February 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS postcard: Columbia)
Rome, Feb. 6, 1934 Have I ever written to you about J. R. Duron, a young French professor (at a Licée) who is writing a book about my philosophy?1 He is now in England on a Rockefeller Fellowship,2 at 33, Steele’s Road, London, N.W.3. I have mentioned you to him in a letter, thinking that it might help him to talk with somebody who knows me well, and also my philosophy. If you feel inclined, you might make an appointment with him when you are next in London.—I have had a letter from S. who says now he has finished with perception and with Lovejoy. G.S. 1 Jacques Duron (1904–52), was a French lycée teacher and student of Santayana’s philosophy. His book, La Pensée de George Santayana: Santayana en Amérique (Paris: Librairie Nizet, 1949), is an important critical analysis of Santayana’s writings. 2 The Rockefeller Foundation, founded in 1913 by John D. Rockefeller, promotes the well-being of mankind throughout the world. It has given many fellowships, scholarships, and grants.
To Charles P. Davis 7 February 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 7, 1934.
Dear Davis Thank you for your two letters, with the enclosures. I don’t subscribe to the press-cutting agencies that promise to let you see yourself as others see you. It would be much better not to see oneself at all, but be as transparent a medium as human clay can become. However, as that is an unattainable ideal, at least in this world (and even in Dante’s Paradiso,1 where the spirits are rather self-conscious) it may be well to get an outside instead of an inside view of oneself occasionally. I had seen one of the articles, but not the one in the Sun,2 with the mistakes you point out about
5:86
The Letters of George Santayana
my family. I have sent the author a copy of a short autobiography of mine, with the correct account marked—in case he writes again—an obituary notice—about me one of these days. But really, when you think of it, to have people make up your history in the ir minds—that is truly fame! ^^ Any one may have the cold truth recorded about him, but to be the subject of legend even in one’s lifetime exceeds the dreams of human vanity. Lucky if the fiction is harmless, and doesn’t take the form I once overheard in an electric car in Cambridge. A young Jew and a somewhat older one were considering what courses might be worth taking at Harvard: the elder one mentioned one of mine and said: “I should take that, if it wasn’t given by that d—d Japanee.” It is true that I was born in Madrid, not in Avila. My father and mother moved to Avila a year or two later,3 because it was a healthier place, not too hot in summer, and because one of my father’s brothers, “tio Santiago”,4 was stationed there in a government office. We had no family connection with Avila or with Madrid. My father’s family belonged in Valladolid and Zamora, my mother’s family in Reus in Catalonia. It was my sister’s husband who was traditionally an Avilés and had a house and farm, which remain in the family to this day.5 Do come to Rome some day. It is lovely here in winter and of course in spring, and enlightening as well as edifying. Roma caput mundi.6 Your old friend G.S. 1 Dante’s Divina Commedia is comprised of three sections: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. The narrator (Dante) is led through Paradise by Beatrice. 2 The New York Sun article has not been identified. 3 A retired colonial official, Agustín Ruiz de Santayana y Reboiro (1814–93) married Josefina Borrás y Carbonell (1826–1912) about 1863. 4 Santiago Santayana and his wife María Josefa lived for a time with Santayana and his father after Santayana’s mother returned to Boston. See Persons, 118–25. 5 Celedonio Sastre Serrano (c. 1840–1930), a lawyer and small landowner, was a widower with six children when he met and married Santayana’s half sister Susana. 6 Rome, head of the world (Latin).
1933–1936
To George Sturgis 13 February 1934 • Rome, Italy
5:87
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 13, 1934 Dear George, Just a word to say that my cousin Manuela has changed her address. She says she has been seriously ill with “congestion” (whatever that may be) and heart-trouble, and has been obliged to move to a ground floor apartment, to avoid stairs. Her new address is: Doña Manuela Santayana Fernandez de los Rios, 31, 1–o centro izquierda. Madrid. G.S.
To Evelyn Tindall 19 February 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Texas)
Hotel Bristol, Feb. 19, 1934 Dear Miss Tindall If you should be leaving Rome, as you said you might during the Spring, I should be much obliged if you would send me word a week or so in advance, so that I might let you have the chapters of my book which are now ready. I don’t bring them to you at once because I hope in a month or two to have finished this Part:1 and there might be small matters to adjust in the earlier chapters, when the later ones have taken shape. However, this could always be done afterwards in the copy, and I should like to have as much typed as possible before you go. There are now five new chapters ready, and I think three or four more will complete this Part—which is next to the last, not counting a short Epilogue, to match the Prologue at the beginning. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Part IV, “In the Home Orbit.”
5:88
The Letters of George Santayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 24 February 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 24, 1934 Dear Cory Your letter reminds me that I hadn’t sent you the last number of Analysis, but as you are in communication with the editor I suppose you have seen it.1 Rather poor stuff. I don’t think Englishmen are inclined to think, unless there is something wrong with them; the good and happy ones don’t think at all; they merely feel the pleasant eloquence and practical import of language. They can be great poets and great sailors (not generals!) but they are lost in philosophy; and only the small cranky minds among them take to philosophy hard. Analysis shows the result. That you should be compelled to say “physical object” instead of “thing”, and that when I say “being”, I ought to have said “subsistence”, are further instances of the same smallness and crankiness. They have got into special ruts which they think highways; and they never can see round the corner. In this —ese particular cases they are insisting on “epistemology” when we are talking physics; even if they call themselves realists, they have lost the courage or the instinct to put themselves d’emblée2 intellectually and imaginatively, in the midst of nature, and conceive the existence and movement of nature sympathetically and by dramatic analogy. There must always be a wire showing how the puppet is pulled by your own “experience” and can’t have any life of its own. “Subsistence” is a particularly dangerous and cowardly word: it assimilates essences to facts or to truths, giving them a sort of cosmic status, like the Logos;3 which is too much and too little. Too much, because essences are then hypostasized, or half hypostasized: too little, because they are not recognized to be independent of and prior to existence or to the actual, quite contin^ ^ gent, structure of the world. I am all right, and the novel is progressing slowly but much to my own amusement. Yours affly G.S. 1
Professor A. E. Duncan-Jones was editor of Analysis, a new English philosophical journal to which Cory had submitted a short article. The editor would accept the article provided Cory made certain changes in terminology (Years, 127–28). “On the Origin in Experience of the Notion of a Physical Object,” Analysis 1 (May 1934): 61–64.
1933–1936
5:89
2
There and then (French). Reason or the manifestation of reason conceived in ancient Greek philosophy as constituting the controlling principle in the universe. 3
To George Sturgis 26 February 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton) Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 26, 1934
Dear George Thank you for the draft of $1,000, which will help to keep my bank account going. When I wrote to you about keeping Mercedes’ quarterly draft up to 2000 pesetas, I supposed that you sent the income from your father’s legacy separately, as I receive it; and in that case she would hardly be receiving 2000 pesetas a quarter for the $ 250 dollars of your aunt ^^ Josephine’s legacy. However, let things go as they are, unless the total stipend falls below 2000 pesetas. She had much less than that before your aunt Josephine’s death, and she kept up her establishment; and the rise in prices (on account of the depressed peseta) cannot be equivalent to the increase in her pension from us. I had said nothing to her on this subject; and if eventually it seems that she is in difficulties, I can reconsider the matter. Several articles or essays of mine have recently appeared in Spanish, translated by Antonio Marichalar who is a rather distinguished literary personage in Madrid. The “Brief History of My Opinions” originally belonged in a work in two volumes by many hands, each contributing ^ ^ a short autobiography:1 then there were off-prints (of which I think I sent you one) and the Spanish translation appeared in a review entitled Sur, of Buenos Aires.2 I have a copy, so don’t bother about sending the newspaper, if Maria Larremendi3 has sent it to you. The translation is admirable— fashionable—considered as Spanish: but it doesn’t always convey the meaning of the original; or any great meaning in particular. When Marichalar quite understands, his versions are capital. Give my best regards to Bangs4 when you see him. He and Bob Barlow,5 as a sort of Dickensian firm, are very important in my recollections: if I should ever write my life, they would appear in it with great éclat.6 Does he still recite Captain Sim’s, “Thar She blows” with the praises
5:90
The Letters of George Santayana
of salt pork that “lies there a-nourishing of you for days and days.”? Those suppers at the “Spee,” to which Bangs & Barlow sometimes took me, in a room that was like the cabin of a sailing ship have remained firmly fixed in my mind, as a sort of ideal of manly conviviality.7 At the “Gashouse”8— though I loved it dearly—feasts were more confused. My novel—which I now really hope to finish—keeps me thinking of those old days, tho’ it is supposed to be dated some [across ] fifteen years later. It was originally a college story but college has now almost disappeared from the scene. Yours affy G.S. 1
Contemporary American Philosophy: Personal Statements, vol. 2, edited by George P. Adams and William P. Montague (New York: Macmillan, 1930): 239–57. 2 “Breve historia de mis opiniones,” Sur 3 (Buenos Aires, 1933): 7–44. 3 Unidentified. 4 Francis Reginald “Swelly” Bangs (1869–1939) became a prominent Boston lawyer and civic leader. 5 Robert Shaw “Bob” Barlow (b. 1869), a member of the Harvard class of 1891, was among the group of undergraduates who became close friends with Santayana when he was a young philosophy instructor in the early 1890s. A lawyer, Barlow served as assistant corporation counsel for the city of New York (1891–98). 6 Brilliance (French). 7 The suppers at the Zeta Psi Club, or “Spee,” at Harvard in the 1890s and “Swelly” Bangs’s recitation of Captain Sims’s narrative are recalled in Persons, 343–44. 8 The Delta Phi Club, known familiarly as the “Gashouse,” at Harvard, later was renamed the Delphic Club.
To John Hall Wheelock 6 March 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, March 6, 1934 Dear Mr. Wheelock I am very glad that Mr. Irwin Edman has been willing to undertake the editing of selections for the Modern Student’s Library. He is modern enough, and at the same time familiar with my writings and a friend of mine personally, so that he can be trusted to do the work as it should be done. It is also interesting to hear of the cheap edition of “Character & Opinion in the U.S,” to be brought out by the W. W. Norton company.1 I have always defied pirates, like an elderly female only too willing to be ^ ^ ravished; and it is more than one could expect to find the poacher at last
1933–1936
5:91
paying for his pickings. There is a slip of the pen or of the memory on page 176, lines 4 and 6, where “Rebecca” should be “Rachel”; but I suppose it is impossible for this to be corrected, unless it has been done already.2 I appreciate very much the interest which you take in the diffusion of my books. Perhaps if I had written only one book it would be easier to keep it afloat. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
New York, 1934. This correction was made.
2
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 13 March 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Hotel Bristol, Rome March 13, 1934
Dear Cory Your letter of a fortnight ago, in which you said that Oliver was “getting under your skin”, gave me a good deal of pleasure and encouragement, because in the novel I haven’t the sort of conviction and assurance that supports me in writing about philosophy, even if no one seems to take notice; and it is easier to go ahead if there are indications that one’s labour may not be all wasted. I have had a second slight attack of my ailment, not painful, but enough to interrupt my writing for a few days. Nevertheless, I hope to finish Part IV before leaving Rome, and I will send you a copy. During these last days I have gone over Miss Tindall’s work, about ten chapters, and corrected the verbal errors. Once or twice I had serious doubts about the text. There are some passages too much like my philosophy books. I hope, if it should ever devolve on you to publish the novel, that you won’t hesitate to cut out any words or paragraphs that seem superfluous. On the other hand, I do believe these people are living: and I love some of the things they say. For instance: the American consul in London to Mrs. Alden, bothering him about sending her husband’s body home; “Miss Riddle will explain everything”. Or old Mrs. Darnley, after Oliver is dead, saying to Mario: “This is a wretched world, sir; and the worst of it is that not one of us can live in it for ever”.1
5:92
The Letters of George Santayana
I had ordered Eliot’s new book,2 and am sending it to you to-day. I like it better than his Harvard lectures. Had to read it twice to see the bearings of the various parts; meditated on, it becomes coherent. He has said one or two violent things, perhaps unnecessarily; and (as you will see by my pencil notes) he seems to me to give away his puritan prejudices, underlying his “Catholicism” and rendering it a little disagreeable. The review you send me (by de Senincourt) is an explosion of the reviewer’s wrath, rather than a good criticism; except where he detects the small, local quality of Eliot’s judgements in regard to Ezra Pound, Babbit, etc. Eliot is honest and brave, but limited. G. S. 1 Mrs. Austin Darnley was speaking to Oliver about the death of her son Jim: “This is a wretched world, Mr. Oliver, a wretched world: and the worst of it is, that nobody can live in it for ever.” (Puritan, 511) 2 T. S. Eliot’s After Strange Gods (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1934).
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 19 March 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Rome, March 19, 1934
Dear Cory, No, I haven’t the letter you refer to; probably it was Nelson Smith’s. He is writing a thesis about that subject at Harvard, which I shall be able to send you someday, I suppose, but for the moment it is impossible. Yet you don’t lose much. That Locke, and even more Hume,1 were twittering on the verge of the discrimination of essence is perfectly obvious. So are all idealists. I am sending you a rather elementary but instructive book by Father Maloney of Fordham, N.Y.2 He quotes in it—but I haven’t been able to find the passage again—a phrase of Locke’s to the effect that in comparing “hot” and “round”, or any such “ideas” and seeing their essential relations, we are comparing “existents”. Now that is the position of Lovejoy, etc, to this day. And of course there is an existent event before us, a commotion in the brain; but that this existent has for its essence the “round” or “hot” which is given to intuition is simply false; and there is no reason, in the order of nature and of genesis, why the existent object or cause should have that given essence. But the gnostic presumption comes from starting with experience, or rather with introspection, and assuming that the world must be decked out in those sensuous or verbal or grammatical or moral terms in which we feel the world: which is true
1933–1936
5:93
of the poetic world, of myth, but not of the physical world, of commerce, surgery, and science. Who do you suppose turned up the other day here? Miller. He is looking for a job; but is otherwise busy writing a book of philosophy: “Philosophy and Humanity”. Did you see his excellent article (by “Hobart”) in the January “Mind”? I don’t know how he meets the theological difficulties of not letting God escape the responsibility for the badness of his creatures. I am going about again as usual, although not altogether cured. The weather continues erratic and treacherous, without any steady sunshine. Very likely you are luckier in Bournemouth. Yours affly G.S. 1
David Hume (1711–76) was a Scottish philosopher and historian. His philosophical skepticism restricts human knowledge to the experience of ideas and impressions, and has been of extraordinary importance in the history of modern metaphysical thinking. 2 Unidentified.
To Harold Atkins Larrabee 20 March 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Unknown)
Rome, March 20, 1934 Dear Sir:1 Please convey to the American Philosophical Association, and receive for yourself, my best thanks for your congratulations. The consciousness of so much good-will in generous America has always been a great help to me, all the more in that perhaps I hardly had a right to expect it. But America is truly a new world, and it can afford to accept on trial all sorts of influences, leaving it for time to sort out of them the elements capable of continued life. Philosophy in America seems to me to promise great things, on account of this breadth of sympathy and knowledge, and I should be happy to think that I may have contributed my drop to that River Ocean. Yours very sincerely GSantayana 1 In 1934 Harold Atkins Larrabee (1894–1979) was professor of philosophy at Union College, Schenectady, New York, and also secretary-treasurer of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association. He had congratulated Santayana on his seventieth birthday (per Corliss Lamont).
5:94
The Letters of George Santayana
To Carl Clinton Van Doren 20 March 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1. Rome, March 20, 1934 Dear Mr. Van Doren1 It is always a compliment to be quoted, and I should be glad to have you include my chapter on William James in your Anthology. Scribner will inform you of the business side of the matter: but I believe in strictness you are at liberty to reprint any part of that book, as it was not copyrighted in America. Constable & Co of London were the real publishers. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Carl Clinton Van Doren (1885–1950), an American editor, critic, and writer, taught at Columbia University (1911–30). He helped give the study of American literature a systematic place in university curricula. His biography Benjamin Franklin (New York: The Viking Press, 1938) won a Pulitzer Prize. Chapter III from Character is reprinted in Modern American Prose (New York: Literary Guild, 1934): 180–93.
To John Herman Randall Jr. 21 March 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
March 21, 1934 HOTEL BRISTOL ROME
Dear Mr. Randall1 I shall be very glad to see you any afternoon, except Sunday, between 6 and 7 o’clock, and as I might possibly not have got back when you called, you had better let me know when —at ^day^ you are coming—by note, please, because I don’t go to the telephone—so that I may be sure to be at home You didn’t need such and so many sponsors as you invoke, but I am glad to be reminded that you have sown seeds of philosophy in Cory’s mind, because I should like to know your impression of his abilities. Yours sincerely GSantayana
1933–1936
5:95
1 John Herman Randall Jr. (1899–1980) studied at Columbia (Ph.D., 1921) and Colgate universities and later was professor of philosophy at both. His numerous works include books on philosophy, religion, and intellectual history.
To Mercedes Moritz Randall [c. March 1934] • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Friday
HOTEL BRISTOL ROME
My dear Mrs. Randall1 Of course I shall be most flattered to receive your husband’s better half this afternoon. I wasn’t sure he had one, and in any case, as I don’t pay visits myself, I shouldn’t have ventured to ask for it, if I had known it existed Thank you for coming of your own accord Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Mercedes Irene Moritz (1895–1977) received an A.B. from Barnard College (1916) and an A.M. from Columbia University (1930). She married John Herman Randall Jr. in 1922. An educator, author, and editor, she held national offices in the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Her biography of Emily Greene Balch, Improper Bostonian (New York: Twayne Publishers), was published in 1965.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 25 March 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Rome, March 25, 1934 Dear Cory The other day I sent you yet another book on Locke—a Ph.D. thesis at Harvard sent me by the author.1 It is excellent: not noticeably in the Seminar lingo, and not weak philosophically, except at the very end, where he has to breathe an Amen. I have written to him, saying that what most pleased me in his thesis was the clear way in which he showed that “idea,” to make sense, must often be taken to mean “essence”. This clears up Locke’s confusions, so to speak, upwards; but there remain the confusions downwards, towards biology. Locke was a psychologist, as much as
5:96
The Letters of George Santayana
a critic of knowledge: used psychology as an instrument in criticism; and he felt he knew perfectly the origin of ideas, namely, that they arose by contact of the human body with material things. This was the original meaning of “experience”. L / Had Locke stuck to this presupposition of common sense, he would have restored tradition downwards as well as upwards, and retained an “orthodox” system entirely different from that developed by his followers almost exclusively out of his errors and ambiguities. It wouldn’t then have been necessary to place the world, as the writer of this thesis does “somehow within experience”, because experience would never have been deprived of its involution and relevance within the world. Yesterday I also sent you a number of Life & Letters in its new form. I have subscribed, but I am afraid it won’t be much good. I read Wyndham Lewis on Hemingway2 (whom I have never read) and agreed, but wished he had been clearer; also Aldous Huxley,3 pure rubbish; and finally a very good review of Eliot: do read it. The anonymous critic understands: and if he is too favourable, that is a generous fault. Miller has settled down here and asked me for “work”; I have started him on “Dominations & Powers”, hoping he will extract matter for some articles. It would be jolly to get that child, or children, however tiny, safely born and christened. I am again inclined to go to the Riviera, not to Cortina, partly for economy and partly because it is nearer other people, in case I should need looking after. I am quite well again, and my head working excellently. Part IV is in the act of being finished, and rather tragic. The thing develops so of itself, and rather surprises me, although the germ of all that emotion was in me from the beginning. If nothing untoward intervenes I am confident of finishing the whole book this summer. I was at Bournemouth once during the war, but didn’t like it so well as Brighton in one direction or Torquay in the other. Why don’t I feel like going to England again? Partly because I am too old and fat—not at all presentable to English eyes; and partly because my pedestrian and country-inn days are over, and I should be bored and really not as comfortable as at a continental hotel. Some day you must come and join me, preferably when the novel is finished and we can review it together. Your own work, too, must be considered. Last Sunday I went for the first time to the opera, to hear Toti dal Monte in Lucia.4 Naturally, I remembered you. She is a very good singer, except that some of her staccato notes are merely
1933–1936
5:97
clicks, and she stops elaborately to breathe before the hard passages. Once the clicks actually caused a laugh in the gallery. Yours affly G.S. 1
Samuel Martin Thompson’s “A Study of Locke’s Theory of Ideas” was his 1931 Princeton University Ph.D. thesis published in 1934. 2 Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957) was an English novelist, essayist, and vorticist painter. His article “The Dumb Ox: A Study of Ernest Hemingway” appeared in the April 1934 issue of Life and Letters. Ernest Miller Hemingway (1899–1961), an American novelist and short-story writer, received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. 3 Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894–1963) gained early fame with satirical novels and short stories. Brave New World (1932) depicts a repulsive Utopia; it expresses his concern over the dangers of scientific progress. He also wrote travel books, biography, and essays. “Wars and Emotions” is the article in Life and Letters (April 1934). 4 Toti dal Monte was an Italian coloratura soprano. Here Santayana sketched a rotund, open-mouthed Toti dal Monte as Lucia. Lucia di Lammermoor was one of Cory’s favorite operas.
To Samuel Martin Thompson 25 March 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Thompson)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, March 25, 1934 Dear Mr. Thompson The point which has most pleased me in your thesis—which I have read with interest—is the clearness with which you bring out the constant need of taking “ideas” to mean “essences”. This clears the whole matter up, so to speak, upwards; but you don’t seem to me to clear it up downwards, towards biology. Locke began with biological assumptions; he knew the origin of ideas through contact with things: this was “experience” in the original sense. If you had restored tradition on this point, as you do in the upward direction, I think you would have recovered altogether what Locke meant to say and ought to have said: which was not at all what his school gathered from his loquacity. If you restored the biological presuppositions of Locke, and of everybody, you would not need to pack the world “in some fashion within our experience”, because the involution and relevance of our experience within the world would never have been disregarded Yours sincerely GSantayana
5:98
The Letters of George Santayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 4 April 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Rome, April 4, 1934
Dear Cory Your little article1 pleases me immensely, and I am glad you wrote it, so to speak, on the sly. I don’t mean merely that I didn’t hear about it first but that there is independence also in the substance, because you don’t say at all what I should say of myself, or even what I should have expected you to say, but paint a little miniature of your own, flattered, of course, but original, and in the style of the artist, of the free observer. I like this as much as your first article2 about me, which was the original occasion of our friendship. The style also seems easy and flowing, and without blemishes; unless “about the best thing” be condemned as too American. “Perhaps” would have been more literary. I hope you will get your philosophical article into Scrutiny: although they won’t give you £5 for it. I too am thinking of sending a short article3 for the sake of turning an honest penny to Canby, who has asked for something on Fascism. It will not be on Fascism strictly but on Order. Yours affly G.S. Part IV of the novel is finished. 1 “The editor of some literary magazine in London (I can’t for the life of me remember either his name or the title of his short-lived publication) asked me for a ‘portrait’ of Santayana, and I sketched it one morning as a diversion from more serious work. I was not quite sure that my old friend would like it” (Years, 132). This article is unlocated and may never have been published. 2 “A Study of Santayana with Some Remarks on Critical Realism,” Journal of Philosophical Studies 2 (1927): 349–64. Before publication, Cory sent the manuscript to Santayana. Santayana paid Cory’s expenses to visit him in Rome; their first meeting was in Santayana’s Hotel Bristol apartment in April 1927 (Years, 16–21). 3 “Alternatives to Liberalism,” Saturday Review (23 June 1934): 761–62. This article also appeared in Life and Letters (10 August 1934): 541–45.
1933–1936
To Charles Augustus Strong 7 April 1934 • Rome, Italy
5:99
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, Rome April 7, 1934 Dear Strong th th I shall be glad to see you on the 16– or 17– and to consult about the future. I am still undecided about where to go for the summer, but shall probably leave earlier than usual so as to economize. Miller, I understand, is no longer “in my employ”. He has taken offence at something—at first, I couldn’t think at what—and has announced his own dismissal, but he hasn’t yet returned the MS of my old “Dominations & Powers” which I had given him to look over. I now suspect that I hurt his feelings by taking back a vague invitation to lunch with me which I had given him when he first turned up, and by explaining that it tired me to talk. I did that, because he seemed disposed to come every day, and I couldn’t stand it. I am sorry to have the “D. & P.” revision suspended; but otherwise it is a relief to have Miller withdraw, as I can hardly afford to support him as well as Cory. Yesterday I had tea with Iris at the Excelsior, and also a glimpe of Antonio. They both looked very well and seemed to be on affectionate terms. Has she had a second child? I didn’t dare ask; but it was evidently not expected in the near future. She was the picture of slimness and youth. You will find me as fat or fatter than ever, but I haven’t had a very good winter. It has been terribly rainy, with little sun, and I have twice been more or less under the weather. But otherwise I am in high spirits. Yours ever G.S.
5:100
The Letters of George Santayana
To Curt John Ducasse 8 April 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Brown)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1. Rome, April 8, 1934 Dear Mr. Ducasse1 Your paper on “The attributes of material things”2 gives me the greatest pleasure, and I admire the clearness and simplicity with which you mark the right path through the labyrinth. There remains an ambiguity, I think, about space and time, and you acknowledge it. The properties of a portion of physical space and time constitute a physical substance: but pictorial space and sentimental time have no properties, only qualities. They are essences. I feel that there remains a difficulty also in regard to the “psychological” reality of given qualities. Nausea and green no doubt cannot occur except in feeling or (what I regard as the same thing) to intuition; but “four” can occur in the legs of a chair as well as in the mind of a man counting them. So that I think you can’t stop at a psychological existent, but must end with an essence. Besides, the relation of the quality intuited to the intuition is not that of a predicate to a subject, but that of a “content” to a feeling. The feeling is not green. Yet we say the feeling is nausea; because here we are far more aware of the experience, or disturbance of life within us, than of the object, which is too fluid and unclassified to be easily named. So with pain. The quantity rather than the quality, the coming and going, rather than the “content”, interest and absorb us; and therefore we name the intuition, the active feeling, and not that which it reveals. No doubt you have convincing things to say on these points also; and I hope very much you will make a book of these articles, because otherwise they might not have the great and decisive influence which they deserve to have. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Curt John Ducasse (1881–1969) attended Washington University (B.A., 1908) and Harvard (M.A., 1909; Ph.D., 1912). Though Ducasse had no courses with him, Santayana conducted his doctoral oral exam in metaphysics. 2 “On the Attributes of Material Things,” Philosophy (1 February 1934): 57–72.
1933–1936
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 8 April 1934 • Rome, Italy
5:101
(MS: Columbia) Sunday, April 8, 1934
Dear Cory The series of excellent papers on the eternal Strong-problem seems to continue. Here is another. I have made some notes, but on the whole I think the man is very clear-headed, as he was also in his book about cause.1 G.S. Besides the ambiguity about space & time (which he acknowledges) there is one between the act of intuition and the instance of the essence. They are inseparable, but they are, ontologically, different. And, as I have noted, the essence may be exemplified, that is some essences may, apart from any psychological actuality; as in the four legs of the chair. Apart from these two points I thing Ducasse is wholly right. 1
Ducasse’sCausation and the Types of Necessity (1924).
To George Sturgis 14 April 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome April 14, 1934 Dear George Thank you for my new letter of credit, sent to Thos. Cook & Son. It comes opportunely, as this last month or two has/ve been rather a tax on my budget. Doctor’s bills, 1000 lire, dentist’s bill, 1700, aid to my old colleague Miller (he calls it loans) 1500 lire. However, this is exceptional; and as soon as I leave Rome I shall begin to economize, so as to have a margin for next winter, when I mean to return here. These rooms are very pleasant and comfortable, I am used to them and to the servants in this hotel, and I don’t want to change unless it is absolutely necessary. It is possible that I may spend the summer, or a part of it, with Strong at his villa in Fiesole, as a paying guest. He is terribly hard up. What a strange turn of affairs, that I should come, as a boarder, to help him pay
5:102
The Letters of George Santayana
his cook! The arrangement isn’t yet made, but he has proposed it, and is coming to Rome next week, when we can talk it over. I wrote not long ago to the new President of Harvard College1 about the legacy which I am leaving them, expressing the hope that if the sum given wasn’t enough for the intended purpose—to keep some impecunious genius alive—they would allow it to accumulate. He has replied very civilly, saying he had been a pupil of mine, and much impressed when a Freshman by the view I unrolled before him of the history of philosophy: so that there is no knowing how far I may not be responsible if he goes wrong. But as to the legacy, he said he hoped I had mentioned in the deed of gift that they might let the income accumulate, because otherwise they might feel bound to spend it all. I don’t remember the exact wording of the deed. Would it be easy for you to look it up and send me a copy of that passage? I don’t want to make any fuss: and if they don’t feel authorized, as things stand, to let the fund grow, I will suggest that they invite some other friend of Harvard to double it. After the present crisis passes, that ought to be easy. The trouble is that the income of $40,000 now wouldn’t keep even a poet from starving. It hasn’t been a good winter here; rain almost every day; but I am well and in good spirits. G.S. Yours affly 1
Letter unlocated. James Bryant Conant (1893–1978), Harvard class of 1914, became president of Harvard University in 1933, succeeding Abbott Lawrence Lowell, and served until his retirement in 1953. He was American Ambassador to the Federal Republic of West Germany from 1955 to 1957. His books on education have been influential in the training of American schoolteachers.
To Evelyn Tindall 14 April 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Texas) Hotel Bristol, April 14, 1934
Dear Miss Tindall Here is the rest of Part IV of the novel. Don’t hurry over it. I have other things to attend to for the moment. Mr. Miller has given up the work which he had undertaken for me, and I believe is leaving Rome. If he has not paid you for the pieces he dictated, please put that down to my account.
1933–1936
5:103
I am not sure whether you saw the two books of old MS, chiefly in pencil, which I had given him to look over. If you could make out the text without too much labour, and were willing to wade through a chaos of fragments, I should be very glad to entrust the whole thing to you directly. The part you copied seems entirely different, and much more manageable, than it did when in the notebook. My idea is to make articles, and ultimately if possible a book, out of this old material Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Evelyn Tindall 18 April 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Texas)
Hotel Bristol, April 18, 1934 Dear Miss Tindall Please don’t hurry yourself in the least about my MS. If it is ready on the 1st— of June it will be in time for my purposes. I may possibly have a chapter or two of Part V1 done by that time; but I don’t expect to finish the whole before the autumn. As to the other pencil MS in a/ two note-books, I think it would be better for me to read it over and make some indications in blue pencil, as to the parts that belong together, or may be left out. Parts are more than twenty years old, and I don’t remember what is in them. Perhaps, if the handwriting doesn’t trouble you, you might take the note-books with you to England, and copy them there at your leisure. I expect to spend this summer, or a part of it, at Villa “Le Balze” Fiesole, Florence. You could send me the copy there, as little by little you got it ready. There is a lot of it. I hope you have entirely recovered and—let me repeat—that you will take all the time you like about this work. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
“Last Pilgrimage.”
5:104
The Letters of George Santayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 25 April 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, April 25, ’34 Dear Cory Unexpected developments in the inner circle. I am going to spend the summer with Strong in his villa as a paying guest; at least, I am going to try it, and rather think it will work. S. proposed it (enigmatically) by letter before he came to Rome, and now that he is here the details have been discussed, and everything agreed upon. He is going to dismiss Enrichetta1 and the cook and keep only Dino,2 and perhaps his sister (who keeps house for her uncle, Severino the gardner, in the villino3) to help occasionally. We are to have a simple lunch at home, and go to Florence every evening for dinner in a restaurant in the Piazza della Signoria. This last circumstance is what decided me to try the arrangement; because I can go down alone in the afternoon, meet S. just at dinner-time, and as soon as we get back go to bed, or at least go to my room for the night. It is also stipulated that I shall go upstairs immediately after lunch, so that neither then no at dinner will there be time for any tiresome discussion. S. is very easy now in his attitude; quite as in the old days. By occasionally exercising a little self-restraint I think I shall be able to stand it. The object, of course, is economy on the part of both of us. I shall be saving a lot. We have had trouble with Miller. It is too complicated to explain, but he has got a lot of money out of us—principally me—and with great difficulty has been shipped back to America. Incidentally he quarreled with me, said I had committed an impertinent and improper offense against him, and laid a trap for him. He didn’t want to owe anything to such a person; but would I “lend” him another 2000 lire for his passage? [across ] S. thinks he has paranoia: but all is not madness in his method.4 Yours aff —y G.S. 1
A domestic at Strong’s villa. Dino Rigacci was Strong’s manservant. 3 Cottage (Italian). 4 In Hamlet, Polonius [aside] says: “Though this be madness, yet there is method in’t” (Act II, Scene ii). 2
1933–1936
To Adelaide Howard 5 May 1934 • Rome, Italy
5:105
(MS postcard: Unknown)
[…] if we reduced it1 to dry propositions, I think I should agree with the substance of it. But it seems to me a palmary instance, almost a reductio ad absurdum,2 of the habit of transferring old names to new, or to other, things. Smiling and feeling alive, even feeling merged in all life, is not religion: it is at best the abstract mystical element which religion sometimes shares with enthusiasm. To misuse language in this way only makes a genuine position seem dishonest. 1
This excerpt of Santayana’s postcard is quoted in a typescript by Adelaide Howard. The “it” refers to Baker Brownell’s Earth Is Enough: An Essay in Religious Realism (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1933). Baker Brownell (1887–1965) received an A.B. (1910) from Northwestern University and a doctorate in philosophy (1911) from Harvard. He wrote many books and taught philosophy at Northwestern. Adelaide Howard (1905–83) married Brownell in 1933. A graduate of Northwestern (1927), Ms. Howard later studied at the Sorbonne. 2 Reduction to absurdity (Latin).
To Evelyn Tindall 6 May 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Texas)
Hotel Bristol, May 6, ’34 Dear Miss Tindall Could you copy this article1 for me, before doing the other MS.? There is no great hurry, but I should like to send this article to the review that has asked for it—The New York “Saturday Review”—as soon as practicable, since there is money in it—not to be despised in these days. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
“Alternatives to Liberalism.”
5:106
The Letters of George Santayana
To Charles Augustus Strong 10 May 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol May 10, 1934 Dear Strong Very well: I will come to the Minerva on Monday next, a little after 5 o’clock—because I like to have tea early and, if possible, in the Giardino del Lago. We will discuss everything then. I am sorry for poor Miller, he is evidently derelict: but why did he come to Italy at all? He has now returned my M.S. Yours ever G.S.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 11 May 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol Rome May 11, 1934 Dear Cory Here is an article that I am sending, in another copy, to Canby in New York for his “Saturday Review of Literature”. He asked for it, but perhaps is getting something he won’t altogether like. It would be nice if it could appear more or less simultaneously in England. I have thought of “Scrutiny”, the editor having long ago asked me for something;1 possibly, as I appeal at the end to the Devil, it might even do for Eliot in the “Criterion.” What do you think? I am suggesting to Canby that he communicate with you directly, if he has any suggestion to make about an English issue. Of course, “The Adelphi”, in which “The Genteel Tradition” appeared, is now out of the question. Miller’s apparition has had one good result, that I am deep in “Dom. & Pow’s” out of which a popular book, a sort of “Life of Reason” modernized, may be made. Yours affy G.S. 1 Frank Raymond Leavis (1895–1978) graduated from Cambridge University, where he taught English until 1964. From 1932 to 1953 Leavis was chief editor of Scrutiny, a literary quarterly published at Cambridge. He was best known as a literary critic and a principal figure of the New Criticism.
1933–1936
To Stuart Gerry Brown 14 May 1934 • Rome, Italy
5:107
(MS postcard: Syracuse)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London. — Rome, 14. V. ’34. I am glad to receive your letter and will answer your questions briefly.1 1–st I am a Naturalist in general philosophy, whereas Babbit & More2 begin with moralism. I admit their point of view only as an optional attitude, as if they were Roman patriots or Buddhist monks, but I feel no obligation to accept or enforce any special code or any special civilization. See my “Genteel Tradition at Bay.” nd 2– As I say in that little book, I think the Platonic-Christian theology necessary to defend the moralistic position. Kant3 and the German idealists can’t do it, because this —eir position, though subjective, is not humanistic; and the absolute self may turn pantheist or even materialist, or in the 4 other direction, perfectly anarchical, as in Nietzcs —sche. But that theology seems to me an evident fiction, made to defend a moralistic prejudice. G. Santayana 1 Stuart Gerry Brown (1912–67) attended Amherst College (A.B., 1934) and Princeton University (Ph.D., 1937). He taught at several universities, was an active Democrat, and wrote and edited many books. 2 Paul Elmer More (1864–1937), educated at Washington University and Harvard, taught Sanskrit and classics at Harvard and Bryn Mawr College. He was editor of The Nation (1909–14) and a literary critic. 3 Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), German philosopher, is best known for his three Critiques. In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant sets out to determine the cognitive powers of reason. His ethical considerations are the subject of the Critique of Practical Reason (1788) in which he develops his conception of moral imperatives and human freedom. The Critique of Judgment (1790) focuses on the beautiful and sublime. 4 Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844–1900), a German philosopher, condemned traditional Christian morality as the code of the slavish masses. The will of man must create the superman, who would be beyond good and evil, merely values created by the desires of the majority.
5:108
The Letters of George Santayana
To Charles Augustus Strong 15 May 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
May 15, 1934 HOTEL BRISTOL ROME
Dear Strong I was glad to hear that your domestic revolution had been proclaimed without causing bloodshed: but perhaps Dino’s smiles may fade when he hears that I am coming to double his work and diminish his liberty. Probably who/at pleases him is the idea of being, in your somewhat distant shadow, sole padrone1 of the villa. If you say first that I come for a visit, and then that visit is prolonged, I think I ought to add something to his earnings, otherwise he may feel cheated. There is no hurry whatever about my departure from here. A month hence will do nicely, as I am pleasantly busy getting the MS of Dominations & Powers ready for [across ] Miss Tindall, who is to typewrite it all during the summer. Yours ever G.S. 1
Landlord (Italian).
To Charles Augustus Strong 20 May 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, May 20, 1934 Dear Strong Thank you for your French article,1 or philosophic testament, which I have read with the great interest that it would naturally have for me. The chief novelty, and first effect of it on me, is that of a self-revelation. You have lately brought out an older, deeper, and more personal side of your opinions, a side that somehow I had tended to overlook. This appears principally in the whole of the last section and incidentally in other places such as paragraph 2 on p. 45 and the letter quoted in the footnote at the beginning. There is a suggestion of suppressed religious emotion, as well as evidence of intense and prolonged rumination over all these questions. One feels that here is a mind deserving respect and affection.
1933–1936
5:109
Besides this, I think your synthesis or synopsis reveals the complexity of your system, rather than its unity. I seem to see three distinct strains. 1–st Conceptual dogmatism, in all that part where you run parallel to Leibniz,2 and also later, both in your demand for intuitive, not merely practical and symbolic, knowledge of substance, and in your absolute ^ ^ determinism—a hard pill for your “indeterministic friends”. Of course your “Saturnine”, or rather not Saturnine, gift of unexpected comets or microbes isn’t at all the miraculou s ly responsive indetermination which ^^ they desire; nor is it the margin of indetermination which the scientific people now seem inclined to allow. Not that I care for it, though I shouldn’t venture to exclude it positively: but I felt that your flat assertion of determinism at the end, when you had given relatively so much space to the subject, was less cautious than might be expected nd 2– Physiological psychology. rd 3– The more recent dynamic or pragmatic or empirical approach to physics. E.g. where you define contiguity by means of causation, or appeal to animal faith as the basis of knowledge. I don’t think you manage to solder this method with N–o 1. and the unity of action or attention which you invoke,/ ( the sentient elements remaining distinct and insulated) does not seem to me to furnish any “explanation” of the specious simplicity of images. The sentiency of those elements evidently remains private and monadic; they are not fused; and the basis of the actual per^ ^ ception is the total operation of the organ. Your posited sentience is therefore entirely useless to pave the way for actual consciousness. But this question opens our old and useless discussion, and I will not pursue it. I like the first, closely reasoned, part of your article best. It is admirably done, although I see in it only an excursion into the realm of essence and not a proof—there can be no argued proof—of the constitution of substance. Yours ever G.S. P.S. I enclose a syllabus of Whitehead’s seminary3 sent me by Mrs. Toy. 1
Unidentified. Gottfried Wilhelm Freiherr von Leibniz (1646–1716), a German philosopher and mathematician, studied science, history, and law. 3 “PHILOSOPHY 20h / Seminary in Metaphysics / 1933–34 / Preliminary outline of topics / 1. General Theme of the Course: / The relation between necessity and contingency in metaphysics: … Thesis: there is an element of contingency in becoming as well as in being. And it is necessary that there should be such an element. …” 2
5:110
The Letters of George Santayana
To Charles Augustus Strong 25 May 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller) Rome, May 25, 1934
Dear Strong Thank you very much for the Lovejoy Controversy. You know I am not fond of polemics, whether I be directly concerned in them or not; and this instance confirms my prejudice. Lovejoy doesn’t write at his best: he beats about the bush, misses the point, and is evidently bored at having to write at all. In his book, on the other hand, his last chapter was excellent. Of course I agree with you against him on the main point; he is frankly a believer in psychologism, supposing “mental existents” to be natural facts knocking about in time, if not in space, among physical forces. But at least he admits the latter also: and though that makes rather a poor system, it makes a sounder view than if he were an out and out idealist. He should read Cory’s article in “Analysis”, which doesn’t reach the subject announced in the title but shows neatly that mental history cannot be inspected. As to your two new articles—or one, because I had already seen the first—they are not, I think, equal to your French essay as a presentation of your doctrine; but you say good things. My chief objection is the same I stated the other day: that I don’t see how the sentient nature of your atoms helps the organism to come to consciousness. It is no one of them, as in Leibniz, that grows into a view of the universe: there is no inward development of sentience into mind. The sentience is simply a parallel instance of animation, on a smaller scale. I also thought, in reading you with one eye on what Lovejoy might retort, that there would be some difficulty in expressing the relation of datum to existence in the case, e.g., of pain. Doesn’t the datum here seem to be mental and to have the “thickest” sort of existence? No doubt the awareness of the painful quality is an after-awareness in respect to the shock first surprising us: distress is the dominant factor: but is this acute sense of existence a datum, or a sort of intense absence of data—an aching void? It is a difficulty that of course arises on my view [across ] and is troublesome verbally, although I feel that the facts are plain enough. Yours ever G. S.
1933–1936
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 26 May 1934 • Rome, Italy
5:111
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome, May 26, 1934 Dear Cory Don’t do anything about my article “Alternatives to Liberalism” unless you hear from Canby or from me. It is an article written for him (I hope he will pay for it) and it mustn’t go to anyone else without his consent. Your paper in “Analysis”—which I send you, in case you should like an extra copy—is like those aeroplanes going faster than light and reaching the end of the journey before they have started. It is very good, but it doesn’t reach the positive question about the notion of physical objects. It shows—what is perhaps more important in itself—that we can never inspect the history of the mind. We must rely either on memory, which in autobiography is very novelesque, or on external observation and documents, which must be interpreted by the dramatic imagination. So that the mere mental history of an idea, such as the idea of material things, can never be written with any exactness: and why shouldn’t that idea, in different persons and in different animals, be very varied, and have an unlike origin? Strong, whose French essay I have read and written to him about, has now sent me his last and also his forth-coming article in the controversy with Lovejoy. Lovejoy’s own article is poor stuff, and ill-tempered: I suspect he was bored with Strong, and driven to answer him against his inclination. Strong has some good things, but is prosy and preachy: instead of presenting his views scientifically, as possibilities to be considered, he writes as if he were announcing the immediate Coming of the Lord, to save all realists, and damn all idealists. I send you a substitute for your Christmas present, in case you need to get clothes Yours affly G.S.
5:112
The Letters of George Santayana
To Evelyn Tindall 30 May 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Texas)
Hotel Bristol, May 30, 1934 Dear Miss Tindall Here are a lot of loose sections of “Dominations & Powers” which I have looked over and almost wholly re-written. If you can do these, or a part of them, in the next fortnight, and send them to me, with your account so far, I will let you have the two old notebooks for the summer. I am now going to reread them, divide them into sections, and try to make them as legible for you as possible. I expect to leave for Florence about June 14. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Charles Augustus Strong 3 June 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Rome, June 3, 1934 Dear Strong I haven’t yet begun preparations for departure, beginning with being photagraphed for a new passport, and packing my books. I think I shall th be ready between the 11th and 15– , and will let you know when I am able to fix the day. Your letter is very closely reasoned, and I agree with almost every part. But what, exactly, is the new step taken by your theory? You don’t seem to me to meet the point I made in the passage you quote: but I am aware that I didn’t state it with all the force which it has in my own mind. There are no recognized unambiguous words for the elements concerned—substantial, dynamic, psychological, transcendental. There are only two points that I should like to comment upon. First, where you ask if “that which intuits cannot be a portion of the flux”. This suggests that my difficulty might be the same, for instance, as McDougal’s,1 who thinks the brain can’t think, but it must be an anima.2 Of course, a materialist doesn’t make any bones of a complex organ hav-
1933–1936
5:113
ing a simple function, (a trope, or something in the realm of truth) and thinks it natural that that function should be raised to an actual unity in ^ ^ c/sensation or consciousness. The point is whether this actual entelechy, consciousness, would be better understood if we supposed the organ to be composed of sentient elements. A string, vibrating, gives forth a single sound: would this be made clearer by supposing that before there was any string or any vibration, the stuff of the string was composed of subsounds? It seems to me nothing but myth extended tw/ oward the infinitesimal. “That which intuits” might also mean spirit. This has to be one in each act, but only because it is nothing but a name for that actual synthesis. I say inadvertently, “synthesis”; but what is it that is synthesized? Not any specious elements which might be de/istinguished by further acts of attention in the given field. These specious elements don’t exist separately until they are intuited. What is really summed up or combined is simply the effects of the hurrying stimulations on a sluggish organ—the spokes of the revolving wheel on the retina. In the immediate physiological basis, and in the stimulus, there is no summation: the stimulus remains many, and the immediate basis was never anything but a single total im pres— sion. —— affection. The second point: when you insist that “projection outward is intentional”, and that this creates the “phantasm”. This is what I think, of course; and this introduces spirit or intuition or actual feeling with its immaterial existence. But I am curious about this “phantasm”: it is something objective and specious, not the mere force or act of intent or intuition which rests upon it, or terminates in distinguishing it. Then what is it? You can hardly say with Lovejoy that it is a psychic existent, because then it would have to be an integral part of the natural world, and a “thick” existent. What is it, then, but an essence? There are plenty of psychic or material existents in the region to which this essence is projected: ^ ^ they are the object: but in the moral world I see nothing but the perception itself—a spiritual moment—and the essence discerned by it. I feel in general that if we admit the dynamic continuity of all events in nature, both spirit and essence are purified very much, and made quiet —te simple on ther/ ir own levels. Yours ever G.S. 1
William McDougall (1871–1938) studied physiology, anatomy, and anthropology at Cambridge University (B.A., 1894) and went on to win medical degrees there. As a
5:114
The Letters of George Santayana
Harvard psychology professor (1920–27), he incurred the hostility of the press and of American psychologists by his lectures on national eugenics. He proclaimed the supremacy of the Nordic race and made class distinctions in mental endowment. 2 Soul (Latin).
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 4 June 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Rome, June 4, 1934 Dear Cory Today I am sending you Parts III & IV of The Last Puritan. I hope to finish Part V and the Epilogue (both rather short) this summer, and then we shall have the thing done—except for such corrections as we may want to make. Your letter of May 25—about Duron and the flat at San Michele—was particularly interesting.1 If Duron says essences are in the mind of God, we needn’t trouble to contradict him. But they are also nowhere: didn’t Leibniz say—it is in the mottoes to the R. of E.—that “le néant a bien des attributs — en communs avec Dieu”?2 As to the flat near Rapallo, I only wish you had it now, so that if I find Fiesole too hot, physically or morally, I might fly there for refuge. But I can go instead to Vallombrosa or even to Venice, if necessary. Somehow, Cortina doesn’t any longer attract me: I feel too old. Take the Countess’s apartment by all means, and in September-October I could join you for a while and see what it is like. As you say, I might stay on for a longer time; but I should come back here in any case during the winter. If you kept it, I could go there for the summer: which wouldn’t prevent you from returning to England. Now that you seem to have a footing there—socially and professionally—it would be a pity to have you go away. That is the only objection to the flat in Italy. But if I took the flat on, you could still go to England for the Spring and Summer without losing your pied-àterre3 in the Riviera. Probably Strong, when he here —ars of this, will want to come and live with you too. I shouldn’t reduce your allowance because you found a cheaper place. It may not be so much cheaper in the end: and in any case you would have other uses for the money. You might save a little, perhaps. If I reduce
1933–1936
5:115
your allowance it will be only because my own budget requires it, which as yet is not [across ] the case. Yours affy G.S. [across page one ] P.S. I expect to move to Le Balze next week, perhaps on th the 14– Address me there. 1 “Sometime in May I heard from [Comtesse de Bellissen] in Italy of a flat to be let in San Michele, a little seaside hamlet halfway between Rapallo and Santa Margherita on the Italian Riviera, and I wrote to Santayana and inquired if he would be interested” (Years, 133). 2 On page xxii of Essence, Santayana translates from the French: “The Non-existent … possesses many attributes in common with God.” 3 Temporary lodging (French).
To Evelyn Tindall 7 June 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Texas)
Hotel Bristol June 7, 1934 Dear Miss Tindall I have been a little under the weather, and the second note-book is still not wholly revised: but I don’t like to keep you waiting, in case you have leisure at present for this sort of work. Here is the first note-book with some more loose sections: I will leave the second note-book at your place before I start for Florence. As you work so quickly, it occurs to me that you may not need the whole summer for my book, but may prefer to despatch it before you leave Italy. In that case, you might send me the copies to Fiesole (“Le Balze”) Florence, and leave the note books and manuscripts at the Hotel Bristol, to be kept for me till my return. This would relieve you of carrying this weight to England. I am ashamed of giving you such an untidy and confused manuscript; but it is a question of leaving it so, or dropping it altogether, as I have done for years: so that you will be rescuing my ugly duckling from never seeing the water. Yours sincerely GSantayana
5:116
The Letters of George Santayana
To Sidney Hook 8 June 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Southern)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, June 8, 1934 Dear Mr. Hook I am much obliged to you for sending me “Communism without Dogmas” and “What is Materialism?”1 You were right if you supposed that I should be in general sympathy with you in both these matters. Yes, even about the Soviets; because although you say I am an extreme conservative, that is true only in the sense that I utterly repudiate liberal claims and maxims, which make events turn on ideas, opinions, votes, majorities, and disembodied moral power. These things may be called powers in virtue of the material agencies and tendencies expressed in them—usually very ill expressed: but in themselves they are powerless. This sort of conservatism is identical with my materialism, not merely compatible with it. I am not a conservative in the sense of being afraid of revolutions, like Hobbes,2 or thinking order, in the sense of peace, the highest good; and I am not at all attached to things as they are, or as they were in my youth. But I love order in the sense of organized, harmonious, consecrated living: and for this reason I sympathize with the Soviets and the Fascists and the Catholics, but not at all with the liberals. I should sympathize with the Nazi’s3 too, if their system were, even in theory, founded on reality; but it is Nietzschean, founded on will; and therefore a sort of romanticism gone mad, rather than a serious organization of material forces—which would be the only way, I think, of securing moral coherence. It seems to me that for this purpose the Soviets are better grounded: they have jettisoned a lot of lies, and I hope that they may succeed in establishing a great new order of society, definite, traditional, and self-justified. I see by your account (what I didn’t know before) that they are formulating a sort of orthodoxy, as did the early Councils of the Church. I trust they would —n’t mix too many absurd commitments with their wisdom: because (as Plato said) though it may facilitate control of people to mix a few timely superstitions with your laws, it won’t help you to meet and to master things: and too many superstitions will ruin you. Islam is a good instance of this, and tragic: because I have a notion that
1933–1936
5:117
Islam came very near being a sort of military Epicureanism—something most promising! You define materialism in contemporary terms, which perhaps are not the most incisive. Matter can’t exist without form, and its form gives definition to its powers: but matter flows through these forms which are not magic bodiless forces magnetizing it from outside: they are the forms it has assumed./ in flowing. That, to my mind, is the essence [across ] of materi^ ^ alism. As for consciousness, it is a hypostasis of some of these forms, a “second entelechy”, doubly dependent. [across page one ] Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Hook’s articles published inThe Modern Monthly (1934) and The Journal of Philosophy (1934). 2 Thomas Hobbes (1588–1670) was an English philosopher who set forth a mechanistic rationalistic materialism. His Leviathan (London: Printed for Andrew Crooke, at the Green Dragon in St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1651) made him the first of the great English political theorists. 3 Nazi is a derisive abbreviation of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, which became the program of the totalitarian dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 11 June 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Rome, June 11, 1934 Dear Cory Here is a note from Canby which gives us carte blanche about the article “Alternatives to Liberalism”. I don’t know whether peddling such a thing would entertain you or annoy you. Don’t do it in the latter case; or if you don’t think the article is good enough. I now have a lot of short pieces in type—Miss Tindall is doing the whole of Doms. & Pow’s—, and when I have had time to read them over and correct the text, I might try publishing some of them. Walter Lippman has asked me, long ago, for something. Do you happen to know what review it is that he edits now?1 I have forgotten, and his letter is lost. I have been a little under the weather, with a touch of — lit tle fever and ^ ^ — diarrhoea and no appetite. It seems to have passed away, but it is a warning, and perhaps I may not be able to stand the heat at Fiesole. There are also some ominous signs—three long philosophical letters from Strong, the last very inimical—that the moral atmosphere too may be rather overcharged. If a storm should break, I have always the polite excuse that “I
5:118
The Letters of George Santayana
can’t work here”, and it occurs to me that I might in that case go at once to Rapallo. What hotel would you recommend? Or if the Countess has left already, why shouldn’t she let me have the apartment for the summer, until you take it on? I am confident that alone, by the sea, I shouldn’t find the heat excessive. I have received a cheque for £19–9–3 from the Royal Society of Literature for the sales of my Locke book.2 Scribner’s hasn’t sent his account yet, but they have written that my royalties, so far, will be nearly $300. Better than nothing. Yours affly G.S. –, Friday. P.S. I expect to leave on the 15th 1
Lippmann was associate editor of The New Republic in its early days, but he left to become Assistant Secretary of War during World War I. From 1921 to 1931 he was on the editorial staff of the New York World. After 1931 he had a syndicated column in the New York Herald Tribune. 2 “Locke and the Frontiers of Common Sense,” the paper that Santayana read before the Royal Society of Literature on 19 October 1932, became the first of five essays constituting Turns.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 11 June 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS postcard: Columbia)
Rome, June 11, 1934 Sorry about Rapallo being ruled out for the present,1 but I am glad to know of it in time, as now I won’t take the novel with me (except Part V) but leave it for next Spring, when I can join you at Rapallo or elsewhere, and we can have the grand review. It is all right about my article appearing in “The Florin Magazine”: I hope it means some florins: Scrutiny doesn’t pay, and perhaps is antiFascist. Sorry too about the tonsils, but will write when I have your second letth ter. My departure is postponed until June 19– as I am not quite ready now, and don’t like [across ] being hurried. G. S. 1
The flat in San Michele was unavailable that summer (Years, 134).
1933–1936
To Evelyn Tindall 16 June 1934 • Rome, Italy
5:119
(MS: Texas) Hotel Bristol, June 16, ’34.
Dear Miss Tindall As you see, I have torn out half this second notebook, finding not only the script but often the style and the substance impossible. I have recopied (in pencil, being rather tired) some of the condemned passages, correcting them a good deal ; and I may still send you a few more. ^ ^ It occurs to me that, as this summer I mean to finish the novel, I sha’n’t need both copies of Dominations & Powers: so if you send me only the carbon copy, which will make a lighter parcel to post, and leave the stiff paper copy, together with the manuscript, at the Bristol, it will be better all round. If you are going to England perhaps you wouldn’t mind making out your account in £-s-d. I could then send you the money by cheque, as I still have a bank-account in London. Let me repeat—what is implied above—that I am in no hurry for this work at all, as I don’t expect to do anything about it this summer, except possibly read it over with a view to arranging the sections in a somewhat logical order, and noting repetitions. Yours sincerely GSantayana P.S. I leave on Tuesday for Villa “Le Balze” Fiesole, Firenze.
To Harry Austryn Wolfson 16 June 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, June 16, 1934 Dear Mr. Wolfson1 It is a real gift, this, of so much hidden light on Spinoza, and I am truly grateful to you for sending it. I can’t thank you for it adequately or make
5:120
The Letters of George Santayana
any final comments upon it, because I am leaving Rome, and it is impossible for me to take the two volumes with me. I shall return to them when I get back here in October. But I have already read enough to see how much learning and what perfect simplicity you bring to your task, and how clearly you show the continuity of philosophy through the middle ages and into the mind and language of Spinoza himself. I have often thought that he was the only philosopher of modern times. I now see one reason, that he was not really modern, except as we all must be in our day, but traditional and in the great highway of human speculation: which cannot be said, I think, of any other modern phil o sopher Your learning, ^^ especially your Hebrew learning, enables you to show this clearly. I believe there is another reason also why Spinoza seems to me so pre-eminent: that in spite of being traditional, or because he was not distracted by side issues, he was an entire and majestic mind, a singularly consecrated soul. All these trite dogmas and problems lived in him and were the natural channels for his intuitions and emotions. That is what I feel to make a real philosopher and not, what we are condemned to be, professors of the philosophy of other people, or of our own opinions. When I return to your volumes I shall be particular keen to discover just how you interpret the mediation of intellect in determining the attributes of God. I have supposed hitherto that there was a radical ambiguity here, and that Spinoza had two notions of substance, one of mere substance, and the other of substance involving its own deployment and making necessary, and intrinsic to its essence, every detail of the universe. These two notions seem to me on different ontological levels; mere Being is an essence only; the universe is the sum and system of existences. But didn’t Spinoza attempt to identify the two, and isn’t that sheer confusion? In my remoteness I wasn’t aware that you had become a professor at Harvard. I am very glad for them and for you Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Harry Austryn Wolfson (1887–1974), Harvard class of 1912, was Nathan Littauer Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard until his retirement in 1958. His works include Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle: Problems of Aristotle’s Physics in Jewish and Arabic Philosophy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1929) and The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934), the work to which Santayana refers.
1933–1936
To Evelyn Tindall 22 June 1934 • Fiesole, Italy
5:121
(MS: Texas) “Le Balze” Fiesole, Firenze June 22, 1934
Dear Miss Tindall The packet with the carbon copy has arrived safely. I haven’t opened it, because I don’t wish to be drawn away at this moment from the novel, which as you know I have promised myself to finish this summer. I am sorry to have given you such a confused manuscript—indeed I had thought it impossible until, by the accident of Mr. Miller asking for a job, as he is a philosopher, it occurred to me that he might be able to decipher it and bring it into some sort of order. But he gave the thing up,—being a bit erratic,—and now you have done the job for him. I think it ought hardly to be regarded as ordinary type-writing: it must have taxed your eyes and your patience; besides, the exchange fluctuates, and it is a gamble to know what it may be exactly when you cash your cheque. I therefore send you one for a slightly rounded figure, with my best thanks. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Henry Seidel Canby 25 June 1934 • Fiesole, Italy
(MS: Beinecke)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Fiesole, June 25, ’34 Dear Mr. Canby Although you have been good enough to publish articles of mine occasionally, I am compelled to confess that I haven’t been a constant reader of The Saturday Review of Literature; and even lately, when you have been sending me the paper regularly—many thanks!—I find myself rather at sea in it. You must remember that it is 22 years since I have been in the U.S. and everything there is transformed, so that neither the books reviewed, nor the preoccupations of the reviewers are familiar to me. I
5:122
The Letters of George Santayana
see that you maintain a lively intelligent watch on the world in general; but I can hardly venture to say anything for publication that could pass for a characterization of your special work or its special quality. For instance, I hardly know what other reviews you could be compared with, or come to supplement, or whether you stand for any particular movement of opinion. I suppose you are not an organ of “Humanism” or you wouldn’t have published my “Genteel Tradition at Bay”; but are you “radical” or “romantic” or “pragmatic” and Deweyfied? This last is what T. S. Eliot says the “Humanists” have become: but my ignorance of these contemporary currents leaves me incapable of testing or judging any such impressions. ubsti - “Alternatives to Thank you for your letter about my “S—— Liberalism”. I believe Cory has offered the article to the Editor of “Life & Letters”. I liked that review at first, but not so much now that it is “The Florin Magazine.” I even doubt whether there are many florins in it. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 25 June 1934 • Fiesole, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Le Balze, Fiesole, June 25, ’34 Dear Cory So far existence here has been quite tolerable, the heat is not (as yet) oppressive, and I have managed, with some slight difficulty, to establish a sufficient independence of movement. But I am devoured by mosquitoes, and it seems hardly practicable to go down to Florence on foot or in the tram, except on favourable occasions. I shall have to go down with S. at 6 p.m.: but I have already knocked off tea, so as not to be interrupted in the afternoon, and have established the habit of being dropped in passing through the town, so that I have an hour to myself for walking about a bit, shopping, and having an apéritif before, at 7.20, we meet for dinner. The food is simple but suits me admirably, and S. encourages me to drink! It is natural and, I think, right-minded of you to like the Catholic philosophy-books. They have improved immensely of late in their knowledge and understanding of modern views: not so much in their historical
1933–1936
5:123
criticism, e.g. of Aristotle, Plato, & the Neo-Platonists. They are therefore able to present and defend common-sense—which is what Scholasticism is, apart from the theology—in an enlightened way. Formerly the same soundness was buried in an arid repetition of formulas, without much understanding either of the facts or of the theories of other people. Today, it seems that the Catholics are really the best critics everywhere, and the best informed. My Spanish review, Cruz y Raya, is admirable: and I am reading masterly Catholic critiques of Bergson’s latest book.1 But, as you say, the trouble is that all this is a human dream: it is a beautiful product, like music or architecture, of a long human tradition and art: but it isn’t true. It is a product of the fonction fabulatrice. Dom’s & Pow’s is all typed now; but I am devoting myself to the novel, and haven’t even opened Miss Tindall’s parcel, sent since my arrival here. I hope to have news of your happy deliverance from your tonsils—if that has to be—and of your literary works. S. says you are in danger of letting your mind run away with you, regardless of the facts (in Wells & Huxley).2 Yours affly G.S. 1
La Pensée et le mouvant (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1934). Herbert George Wells (1866–1946), George Philip Wells (1901–85), and Julian Huxley (1887–1975) wrote Patterns of Life (London: Cassell, 1934). 2
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 3 July 1934 • Fiesole, Italy July 3, 1934
(MS postcard: Columbia)
(p. t. o.) VILLA LE BALZE, FIESOLE, FLORENCE.
Thank you for your excellent (and flattering) article. One verbal suggestion for the book: §4, line 4, you might say “contribution of the object.” I think it would be clearer than “objective contribution”. The weather has become cooler, and the mosquitoes for the moment have ceased troubling. The moral atmosphere has also remained serene, in spite of an occasional flash of heat lightning in [across ] the S. horizon. No harm done. G.S. [around margin on other side ] I am having a copy of Joseph Glanville’s “Vanity of Dogmatizing”1 sent to you from Oxford. You might send it on to me later.
5:124
The Letters of George Santayana
1 Joseph Glanvill (1636–80) was an English clergyman and philosopher, one of the Cambridge Platonists. The Vanity of Dogmatizing (London: Printed by E. Cotes for H. Eversden, 1661) contains the theme of Matthew Arnold’s poem The Scholar Gypsy (1853).
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 8 July 1934 • Fiesole, Italy
(MS postcard: Columbia) July 8, ’34
VILLA LE BALZE, FIESOLE, FLORENCE.
My courage has given out under stress of heat, mosquitoes, flies, and dining everyday on the same middling food in the Piazza della Signoria, and th I am leaving on the 16– for Cortina, Hotel Miramonti. Sorry to spoil plan of economy, but glad there has been no other cause. G.S.
To George Sturgis 9 July 1934 • Fiesole, Italy
(MS: Houghton) Fiesole, July 9th 1934
Dear George I am glad to see by your letter of June 28th that my income for this last half-year has kept up to the same figure, practically, as last year. That I have spent so much more is due, as you say, to the fall in the exchange and in my earned income: the $2000 you have sent me to London (one thousand I think, last year) would just cover my added expenditure. But ^ ^ I see there is still a surplus of $3323.27, so that economy is not pressing. This is lucky as I have found, after a fortnight or three weeks at Strong’s that I can’t stand the heat, mosquitoes, confinement, and food; also a certain monotony and dryness in our personal relations, and I am leaving next week for Cortina. In September I shall go down for a month to Venice, before returning as usual to Rome. I am sorry, because what Strong is allowing me to contribute to his household expenses is so little, that I should have saved a lot by remaining here. But after all, my health, work, and pleasure matter more than an economy which is not really required.
1933–1936
5:125
I enclose a second reply from President Conant of Harvard about my bequest.1 You see that now he is satisfied and appreciative. What you tell me about your domestic affairs is not very satisfactory, one way or the other; but I suppose it is better to worry along, if possible, and especially to let the boys have a normal background, especially if they are not going to boarding-schools. Life is a succession of second bests. Yours affly G.S. 1
Unlocated.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 10 July 1934 • Fiesole, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Fiesole, July 10, 1934 Dear Cory On receiving your long letter, I sounded S. as best I could on the subject of your possible marriage, and of his intention s . “How much,” I ^^ asked, “does Cory know about the dispositions in your will?” “Nothing!” he roared. And after a while he observed that “what Cory needs is to earn his own living.” He is very much depressed indeed about his reduced circumstances, and says that perhaps he may make a new will, in harmony with them. But he remembers the terrible trouble he had in Paris making it, and the great expense it involved: so that I hardly think he will move in the matter, especially as his daughter and grandchildren are rich enough without him, on paper, and what he could leave them in addition wouldn’t prevent them from being always in straits. But his Spartan severity in regard to you—sometimes also to Miller—discouraged me from pursuing the subject. As you know, I wished to get his leave to tell you exactly what the will provides, and on what conditions: but evidently he wouldn’t consent to it, and would blame me for having talked about the matter at all. But it has not been sheer indiscretion on my part. When he proposed retaining you as a kind of secretary and pupil, I said explicitly that I thought we had no right to tempt you to stay in Italy, in the years when you might begin a practical career in America, and then to leave you in the lurch. He agreed, and volunteered to make some provision for your future—as I could not do, and wasn’t theoretically inclined to do, because my invitation to you to help me with the Realm of Matter was
5:126
The Letters of George Santayana
explicitly for that occasion only, and not intended to supply you with work for life. It was therefore only right to let you know that S. recognized the obligation, if he retained you indefinitely, to remember you also in your his will. He did so in a very special and characteristic way which I — ^ ^ should like to explain, but have promised not to divulge. Still, as you see, he feels no obligation now not to rescind those provisions; so that if he makes a new will, you will surely not figure in it at all, directly or indirectly. As things stand, you might get something after his death—some time after—and I will go so far as to say that being married or single has nothing formally to do with the bequest. But you would benefit, if at all, as a student of philosophy, not as a personal friend; and if you were ^^ married, and obliged to earn your living in some other calling, that might be an obstacle to receiving the bequest. This point also concerns me, and the allowance I am making you. Your marriage in itself would make no difference: yet suppose you became a farmer in Yorkshire, would you expect me to continue giving you £40 a month for the rest of my life? I should feel that I couldn’t call [across ] on you for help or for company as I might now, and that you had passed out of my sphere. Yours affly G.S.
To Charles Earle Funk 12 July 1934 • Fiesole, Italy
(MS postcard: Houghton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co. 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.11 My name in Spanish is pronounced San-ta-ya´-na, all the a’s being ah’s. But I think my English-speaking friends regard the y as a vowel (it is a consonant here in the Spanish, often confused with ll) and so sound the second syllable like ay in hay. I have no objection, but it is not Spanish. G. Santayana Fiesole, July 12, 1934. 1
Charles Earle Funk (1881–1957) edited, with Isaac K. Funk, the Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of the English Language.
1933–1936
To Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz 23 July 1934 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
5:127
(MS: Brooklyn)
C
/o Brown, Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Cortina, July 23, 1934
Messrs. Justus Buchler & Benjamin P. Schwartz1 Butler Library, Columbia University New York Dear Sirs, Today I have received your bibliography of my writings, some of which, as you predict, I had forgotten, and can hardly recall when I am assured that they exist. I am unfortunately for the moment far from my books and papers, and among the latter I have, in Rome, another extensive bibliography prepared by a young man, I think, at the Univ. of Penn.2 which I would send you, for purposes of comparison, if I could lay hands on it. Would you be willing to wait until October, when I can forward it? As far as my memory goes, you have omitted nothing except my Latin School productions, which perhaps are not worth mentioning. There have also been some translations: of “Egotism in German Philosophy” into French and into Italian;3 and of some more recent articles into Spanish. One of the “Dialogues in Limbo”, the last, has appeared, too, in Spanish, in a Cuban review, in 1927.4 As to republication, let me warn you that some passages in my philosophical articles have been incorporated into my later books, so that perhaps the gist of them is less unknown to my readers than the titles of the articles might lead them to suppose. Apart from this danger of repetition— and there is a lot of virtual repetition in my writings, as they stand—I see no objection to republishing my obiter scripta,5 if you or anyone thinks it worth while; but I would rather not be the editor myself. Although my feeling is—contrary to what some critics assert—that I have always held the same opinions, I am aware of a distinct change, in temper and manner, between my professorial days, when I was (except in vacations) in America, and my free-lance days, when I have lived in Europe: and I don’t like the earlier manner, and don’t wish to re-assert any claim to it. If others, however, like those things, I am perfectly willing that they should like them, as if they were the work of someone else. I should leave
5:128
The Letters of George Santayana
it entirely for you to judge, therefore, whether any old scraps of mine deserved to be re-issued Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Justus Buchler (1914–91) and Benjamin P. Schwartz (b. 1913) coedited Obiter. George Washburne Howgate. 3 L’Erreur de la philosophie allemande translated in 1917 by Guillaume Lerolle and Henri Guentin and L’io nella filosofia germanica translated by Luciano Zampa in 1920. 4 The last dialogue is “The Secret of Aristotle.” The editors are not aware of any Cuban publication. The complete Dialogues was translated in 1941 as Diálogos en el limbo in Buenos Aires. 5 Incidental writings (Latin). 2
To Mary Potter Bush 25 July 1934 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Miramonti Cortina, July 25, 1934 Dear Mrs. Bush You see where I am, with that want of initiative which characterizes an aged and self-repeating temperament. If I were only a Bergsonian “true mystic” I should have made an “effort,” and created some higher form of existence. I am trying to finish the novel, but come upon tiresome snags: however, by leaving troublesome things out, I am determined to bring it somehow to an end, so as to have a clear mental field for some other little things that I want to do. If Edman is still with you, please give him my best regards and tell him I have long been intending to write to him to thank him for various signs of kindness towards me which he has lately shown: but, after all, he can take my acknowlege —dgements for granted. If you come to look after Mr. Bush and prevent him from spoiling the good effects of his cure, and if you feel inclined to return by the Italian line, you might stop in September-October in Venice, where you would probably find me—another instance of running rounds in one’s old traces. And I am not leaving Rome for the present. The landlord reduced my rent by 25%, and Mussolini later,1 by decree, reduced all rents by 10% more, so that my budget is somewhat lightened; and as the dollar seems to keep up, and business in America to improve slightly, I think there will be no immediate need of changing my quarters.
1933–1936
5:129
As to my profile, I have always hated it, but reproduce it here at your request. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) founded fascism in Italy. When King Victor Emmanuel III asked him to form a cabinet, Mussolini transformed his government into a ruthless dictatorship.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 25 July 1934 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Miramonti Cotina d’Ampezzo, July 25, 1934 Dear Cory All is well. I left Fiesole without any rumpus, and had a pleasant glimpe of Venice on the way. Here I am comfortably established, with a mind free from apprehension of any sort, and good food and exercise. It is reassuring to hear that you are not contemplating any rash commitments in the way of marriage and supporting a family.1 If you find a sympathetic lady, who is independent, I see no obstacles to a union: it is not being married but being responsible for a family, and tied to it, that might be a drag on your philosophy. As to Strong, Aldo says he is cowed (avvilito), and I should say myself that he feels “let down,” overwhelmed, by the change in his circumstances; but materially he is still perfectly well-looked-after and comfortable; and I think the house is much pleasanter with Dino only and a light luncheon (very well cooked & served) and a little dinner in the town, than it was with the former arrangements. I suggested to him that, if Margaret doesn’t return next winter—(it is practically only the children who live at Le Balze: the parents remain in Florence and only turn up occasionally for lunch)—he might continue the present arrangement, simply by going down to Florence at mid-day, having a good dinner at one o’clock in a restaurant, taking his drive afterwards, and then having Dino give him a little supper in the evening, while he listens to the radio. He liked the idea, had feared he might need a cook, and I have no doubt will carry out the suggestion. He has also had rather better news from New York about his dividends. Yours affly G.S.
5:130
The Letters of George Santayana
1 Cory wrote Santayana that he had “abandoned any idea of getting married until things were more settled” (Years, 137).
To Charles Augustus Strong 25 July 1934 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Miramonti Cortina d’Ampezzo July 25, 1934 Dear Strong It is now a week since I arrived here, and everything is going well. I have a room at the east end of the house, directly opposite where I was before, with a pleasant view of the foothills and woods, with the Monte Cristallo on the left. It is less grand than the other panorama, but rural and peaceful. The food is excellent, and the highroad tarred, so that I need not fear the dust in crossing it. Naturally, I miss a little the luxury and friendliness of your villa, and the picturesque dinner in the Piazza; but I can work better and sleep better here, as well as get plenty of exercise Venice looked its best, and I am looking forward to returning there in October; but I don’t like the Europa so well as the Danieli, and expect to return to the latter The new quay to the Public Gardens is not yet finished. I have now read the first of Bergson’s new essays and a part of the second. I note that he regards himself as “small” compared with the “masters”, Aristotle & Spinoza (wise choice!) and, in places, admits the material world as also real. If these things are sincere, and there is no equivocation, he would rather disarm general criticisms; because his insistence on duration and vegetative consciousness budding in the dark would then be legitimate enough; that is a perspective in which experience can be viewed, if we abstain from inquiring its —nto its causes or surroundings. Yours ever G.S.
1933–1936
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 12 August 1934 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
5:131
(MS postcard: Columbia)
Hotel Miramonti, Cortina, 12•VIII•’34 Glad you are enjoying your aquatic exercise1 and practising your French. Don’t be troubled about Oliver & Mario. I am on the 5th chapter of the last part, and going S / strong (I instinctive write this word with a capital). If all is not finished when I leave Cortina, I still have 5 weeks in Venice before returning to Rome: and I shall have it done by that time, or so nearly, that it will easily finish itself. There is a great inevitableness about the last lap of anything, and I already feel the glow of having this project, more than 40 years old, actually realized.—As to Bergson, I still read him—his last book, later than the Deux Sources, called La Pensée et le Mouvant—for half an hour after lunch while my room is being done; but I am getting rather fed up with him. At bottom he is very narrow and dogmatic and movement with him is an idée fixe.2 But my plan of writing a general criticism of him is not abandoned: I want to connect that paper organically with the one about inspiration and New Testament criticism: and I now see a way of doing it. The N. T. & Bergson’s philosophy are two instances of inspiration + belief: but B. doesn’t realize that it is belief, faith, that he preaches, and not merely intuition that he enjoys. G. S. 1 Cory was at Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, where he could enjoy swimming. “Aquatic exercise” was a pedantic phrase that Cory had urged Santayana to omit from his novel (Years, 137). 2 Obsession (French).
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 16 August 1934 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Miramonti Cortina d’Ampezzo Aug. 16, 1934 Dear Cory I gather from your letter that you are not enthusiastic about taking the flat a San Michele, unless it could be a nest for young love. Don’t take it if you are not inclined. My experience of Fiesole this summer—which Berenson says is less hot than the Riviera—rather suggests that I must con-
5:132
The Letters of George Santayana
tinue going to the north, at least as far as Paris, or come to the mountains, if I am to keep fit in summer. As yet I am quite able to do so, and I find the life and the walks here still perfectly possible; and as to work, I am doing well, being on next to the last episode of the novel. It therefore would not be a serious disappointment for me, if you abandoned the idea of the flat, which I was to have taken over in the spring. On the other hand, if you still wish to make the experiment, I should be glad to advance the rent for six months, which would take us to April 1–st During the winter you could discover the resources of the place, and if you thought it feasible, I could come to spend the last month or two with you, and gather my own impressions. This is assuming that the Comtesse de Bellissen gives you the option for another six months after April 1st if you or I decided that we should like to spend the summer there. This plan, from my point of view, presents two attractions: 1st that I should see nd you, 2– that it would be a great economy: and the dollar is still going down. Thank you, by the way, for the cheque from Life & Letters. It is entirely for you to decide this matter of the flat according to your sincere inclination. Yours affly G.S.
To Horace Meyer Kallen 20 August 1934 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy MIRAMONTI-MAJESTIC HOTEL CORTINA D’AMPEZZO DOLOMITI-ITALIA
(MS: YIVO)
Aug. 20, 1934
Dear Kallen As you see by this heading I am hardly in the path of your mission of mercy. I am especially sorry, because my mind has been turned lately a good deal in the direction of politics—I mean, in the philosophical sense in which it is your principal interest also; and I should have liked to hear your replies to several questions about which I am doubtful. Did I ever speak to you about my proposed book on Dominations & Powers? By an accident, I have now had all my old MS typed, and with a few additions and solderings I think I may make a book of it before long.
1933–1936
5:133
About Sept. 10 I expect to move to Venice, and a month later to return to Rome. This in case your movements should, by some accident, take a southerly direction. I have been rereading Bergson, his last books, and also rereading his earlier ones. Another subject on which I should like to know your views. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 26 August 1934 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Miramonti Cortina d’Ampezzo. Aug. 26, 1934 Dear Cory Thank you for Canby’s cheque: it would have been an outrage not to have paid for the article he solicited, and considering the reduced value of the dollar, $50 is by no means too much. This month of August has brought me a decent harvest: all together, more than £100 not from my nephew George Sturgis. But this is exceptional: else we might regard the “crisis” as really past. That article, by the way, doesn’t satisfy me at all: I mean to recast it before letting it figure in Dominations & Powers. It was written to order, and not inspired freely, or as a whole: the live parts must be detached from the dead wood. I have sent another much better article to a new Harvard publication called “The New Frontier” (I suppose in the American sense of “The Frontier” as the outposts of civilization) edited by a young man named Otis.1 He sent me two numbers with remarkably enlightened articles by himself; I was enthusiastic, and sent him my “Many Nations in One Empire”:2 for which I don’t expect to be paid; but the article is rather too long for paying magazines to accept. I am in ^ ^ doubt about your interest in politics, I mean, in the theory of politics, else I should send you these two numbers of “The New Frontier” to show you how advanced, in every sense of the word, young opinion can now be in the U.S. Also how well informed. The novel is moving fast towards completion: very exciting, this act of ver lid to the boiling pot: and I capping the climax or putting on the — co— feel (perhaps it is by transference from subject to object) that there is a climax to the story itself, that the movement is accelerated towards the end,
5:134
The Letters of George Santayana
that in a word, it is a true drama. The story will surely be quite finished in the next fortnight (barring accidents) but possibly the brief epilogue will remain to be written in Venice: and even that is already more than half done, including the final paragraph. So, you see, my affairs, for the moment, are going well. I am curious to hear what you have decided in regard to San Michele, Yours affly G.S. 1 Brooks Otis (Ph.D., Harvard, 1935) became a professor of classics at Hobart College in Geneva, New York. 2 The New Frontier (published at Exeter, N.H.) 1 (September 1934): 6–10.
To Charles Augustus Strong 28 August 1934 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS postcard: Rockefeller)
Hotel Miramonti, Cortina Aug. 28, ’34 Thank you for your last letter & poem. The rain has, I hope, made you feel fresher. Here it has been torrential and continuous—very trying for excursionists and boys under canvas; but good for work in my case. Now the weather seems to be clearing, and I hope for a pleasant spell.— I see that Sept. 10–th is a Monday; not a good day for leaving Cortina, as everybody is now doing, especially after the week-end, and in the motor ’bus, for which th I have a return ticket. So I shall leave on the 11– , unless, indeed, the weather should drive me away earlier. In that case I will look you up on the 10th at Florian’s, [across back of card] at lunch time; but more probably on the 12–th. I haven’t yet written for a room, and rather hope to get my old one at Danieli’s: but if that shouldn’t be available, I am thinking of trying the Grand Hotel, from which I could move at leisure if I didn’t like it. G.S.
1933–1936
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 6 September 1934 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy MIRAMONTI-MAJESTIC HOTEL CORTINA D’AMPEZZO DOLOMITI-ITALIA
5:135
(MS: Columbia)
Sept • 6 • 1934
Dear Cory “The novel” was finished on August 31–st. My notion is to let this 5th Part and Epilogue lie for a few weeks—say till I reach Rome—and then revise it before having it typed. It will seem quite fresh to me, now that I forget everything so readily. After that, we can make our grand revision of the whole work. It will have to be done separately, because I don’t think it is worth while that you should come to Rome for that purpose. I don’t like reading aloud, especially my own things, I can’t find the right tone. You do it admirably; but perhaps it would be only in certain passages that please you or bring your dramatic talent into play. Anyhow, I doubt that joint reading would prove practicable. But I should be glad if you would re-read the whole, when it is complete, and send me your comments. I, on my side, will send you mine, with any corrections that I may have thought of. These corrections are dangerous things: often the original turns out to be better on a third reading. But you will be able to guide me there, if my new phrases are decidedly wrong, as they well might be. I think now there would be no real objection to publishing the book at once. I am old enough and far enough not to mind the spitballs that the small boys may hurl at me. There are one or two trivialities that I feel myself had better be left out; and there is the question whether anybody—say the actual Vicar of Iffley— would have any complaint to make at the representation of a predecessor of his—he dies in the book—with a fictitious history. But I think not. I say a word about this side of the matter in the Epilogue which ought to disarm criticism. Thank you for your letter. I wonder whether I have really been of any use to you; but now it is too late to make things take a different turn. I agree that you are best in England, unless you should wish some day to return to New York. Yours affly G.S.
5:136
The Letters of George Santayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 25 September 1934 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Danieli, Venice Sept. 25, 1934 Dear Cory Here too September has been a lovely month; it was very nice in Cortina after a rainy August, and here in Venice it is giving me a taste of real summer, to make the winter to come more bracing. I am quite well and full of occupations. Iris (Marchesa Origo) has written a book about Leopardi for which it is suggested that I should supply a “foreword”.1 It is already half written, in pencil: but I must see her book before I give my preface its proper shape. I am also alert on the subject of “Inspiration”,2 and see a way of putting in the New Testament, Bergson, and the Spinoza lecture under that head. It will also contain a radical restatement of the originality of mind. Besides, there is the revision of Part V of the novel, into which I am fitting one or two rejected passages. And I am reading about Heidegger: a pupil of Husserl’s3 now professor in Berlin, and a tremendous champion of Essence. He doesn’t call it essence but ontology; but the rose smells just as sweet. I am going to send for his principal book, Being & Time, when I return to Rome. Strong has been here for ten days, feeling rather dull. He now doesn’t go down to Florence for his dinner, but has every thing done at home by Dino and Dino’s sister. I showed him your photo in the postcard and he was greatly impressed. “How strong he looks!” “What nice friends he has!” I’m not so sure myself about the superior quality of your friends; but it is nice to have friends, especially young friends, with whom one can be natural. Poor S. has never had any; but his thoughts are now dwelling upon his earliest lady-loves, all from Rochester, N.Y. He was more confidential on this subject than he had ever been before in all our years of friendship and of living together. I could see that he wasn’t telling me anything; he was merely unbosoming himself to a vague other, to listening space. Yours affy G.S. 1
Iris Origo wrote Leopardi: A Biography (London: Oxford University Press, 1935), to which Santayana supplied a foreword (v–vi). Count Giacomo Leopardi (1798–1837) was an Italian poet, a self-taught prodigy affected by physical deformity and spinal disease. His poetry is distinguished by its lyrical beauty and intense melancholy. He asserted that imagination rather than reason is the true source of poetic inspiration.
1933–1936
5:137
2
“Inspiration” is Chapter I of Gospels, 3–19. Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), a German philosopher, founded the phenomenological movement. 3
To Charles Augustus Strong 26 September 1934 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hôtel Danieli Venice Sept. 26, 1934 Dear Strong Except for the rain on the day you left, we have been having perfect summer weather, and if it keeps up I sha’n’t be returning to Rome for the present, especially as I save money by staying here. I say this because I haven’t heard from Iris and it has crossed my mind that possibly she might have sent her M.S. with a note in it, to the Bristol in Rome. They have orders to forward letters, but not books; and such an accident might cause her needless delay. It wouldn’t take me more than a day or two, if I had read her book, to write the “foreword”. Yours ever G.S.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 3 October 1934 • Venice, Italy
(MS postcard: Columbia)
Hotel Danieli Venice Oct. 3. 1934 Glad to see you are so deep in contemporary German lore. I found Husserl himself almost unreadable; but what I have seen of Heidegger (one article in Spanish about Nothingness, and the quotations in the Sternberger book1 I am now reading) seem to be the work of a superior mind.—Not so superior as Descartes,2 I grant: there you have a first rate man. Locke, and all the English, aren’t better than third rate: but they had a political-revolutionary current to carry them and make them important.— I have sent off the “Foreword” to Leopardi, 7 pages, [across] and am free once more.—I expect to stay here until the 17th of October. G.S. 1
Dolf Sternberger (b. 1907) wrote Der Verstandege tod; eine Untersuchung zu Martin Heideggers existenzial-Ontologie (Frankfort, 1933).
5:138
The Letters of George Santayana
2 René Descartes (Renatus Cartesius, 1596–1650), a French philosopher, scientist, and mathematician, is often called the father of modern philosophy. He worked out the treatment of negative roots and a system of notation in algebra, originated Cartesian coordinates and curves, and founded analytic geometry. His works include Discourse on Method (1637), Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), and Principles of Philosophy (1644). Descartes’s methodology makes epistemology the starting point of philosophical inquiry, and his mind-body dualism is central to discussions in the philosophy of mind.
To George Sturgis 3 October 1934 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Houghton) October 3, 1934
HÔTEL ROYAL DANIELI VENEZIA
Dear George It is a long time since I have written, having nothing in particular to say, and knowing that you would infer that I was still among the living, when I drew money. The plan of living with Strong fell through. I staid there a month, but found the place too warm and the routine too monotonous; besides, I wasn’t allowed to relieve Strong’s financial straits in any degree, since he made exact calculations, and allowed me to contribute only enough to cover the expense I occasioned. He wasn’t consistent in this, because sometimes he suggested that I should take his villino, a small old house in his garden, to live in permanently; but he, too, is getting old, and forgets one day what he thought the day before. I went to Cortina, as you probably perceived by my drafts, and then came here for a month before returning to Rome. My novel was finished on August 31–st I wonder if any other book ever took 45 years to write. I don’t wonder that the Sastres are withdrawing their funds in America; they probably need cash, and feel uncertain about the dollar. I am well, and busy, as no doubt you are also. Yours afflyG.S.
1933–1936
To Victor Francis Calverton 5 October 1934 • Venice, Italy
5:139
(MS: New York)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1
Venice, Oct. 5, 1934 Dear Mr. Calverton1 Your book has interested me so much that I have read it in its entirety. If you had begun with the last complete sentence on p. 306, you would have saved me some moments of bewilderment. All mind is individual; but an individual mind, in its interests and thoughts, may range all the way from perfect subjection to tribal tyranny to a morbid rebelliousness and self-worship. That point cleared up, I think your analyses and descriptions, while partisan, throw an instructive light upon things, so complicated and various, that we are always imperfectly informed about them, and in danger of rash generalizations. What has most interested me, and given me most new light, is your chapter on Religion and American Culture. I don’t know the “frontier”, but I do know Boston; and I should say that the Puritan tradition there, prs/eserved on its moral side among old-fashioned Unitarians, had become lay and merely respectable: be respectable, be upright, and some day you will be cultured and rich. But where a religious senti^ ^ ^ ^ ment was mixed in with this morality, it was Evangelical: so that Puritanism and Evangelicalism actually merged in many instances. With many thanks, Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
V[ictor] F[rancis] Calverton was the pseudonym of George Goetz (1900–1940), the Marxist literary critic who wrote The Passing of the Gods (New York: Scribner’s, 1934). He edited The Modern Quarterly: A Journal of Radical Opinion (The Modern Monthly).
To George Sturgis 7 October 1934 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Houghton) Oct. 7, 1934
HÔTEL ROYAL DANIELI VENEZIA
Dear George I forgot in my letter of the other day to mention the principal reason I had for writing. I see that the English pound is now worth less than five
5:140
The Letters of George Santayana
dollars: also that the chancellor of the Exchequer says that this weakness of the £’s part is only “seasonal”—a sort of hay fever, as it were. Before the complaint disappears, you might seize the opportunity to send me a draft for $1000, to replenish my bank account in London, before the strain of Christmas begins to make itself felt. I receive a certain amount from publishers and editors, more than last year, I think, yet not enough to cover my customary expenses in that direction, which I have already explained to you. This, of course, if there are funds available, because the need is not absolute. Yours affly G.S.
To Victor Francis Calverton 13 October 1934 • Venice, Italy
(MS: New York)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1. Venice, Oct. 13, 1934.
Dear Mr. Calverton Your letter of Sept. 27th, and especially the mention of Mr. Sidney Hook, has induced me to write the enclosed article.1 He had stirred me up to form some idea of Karl Marx, and I had written him a letter, saying in part what I say here. You give me carte blanche as to length, and I have exceeded your proposed limits, in spite of cutting out several passages that seemed to wander too far from the main subject. I hope you will think this contribution suitable, and that it will arrive in time. If not, will you please return the MS (I am sorry I have no means here of getting it type-written) as I am putting together a book on Dominations & Powers into which it will go. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
“Ulterior Considerations” became the article “Why I Am Not a Marxist,” The Modern Monthly 9 (April 1935): 77–79. Dominations does not contain a chapter with either title. The manuscript is part of the Calverton Papers in the New York Public Library.
1933–1936
To Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz 20 October 1934 • Rome, Italy
5:141
(MS: Brooklyn)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Hotel Bristol, Rome, Oct. 20, 1934
Dear Mr. Buchler & Mr. Schwartz Having now got into my winter quarters I hasten to send you a list of all my printed writings (that I can remember) not mentioned in your Bibliography. They are few and for the most part unimportant. You hapm pened not to knw/ ow the author of the unsigned W— James review, the only item of any consequence. James was much pleased with this review, and wrote me a generous note about it, which is now in the possession of Dr. H. M. Kallen. I understand better now your idea in collecting my odds and ends, and I shall be much interested in seeing what you think still of some interest. The review of Croce in Prof. Fletcher’s short-lived Review of Comparative Literature might possibly be worth looking up.1 I don’t think I myself have a copy. With much appreciation of your labours Yours sincerely GSantayana P.S. Perhaps I ought to mention that Scribner’s has a project of publishing a volume of selections from my writings. Prof. Irwin Edman was to edit it: but I have heard nothing about it for some time, and the plan may have fallen through. nd Recently Mr. George Lawton2 (35 W. 82– St.) has written proposing to do the same thing. It is possible that these plans are so different from yours that they would not trespass on your ground even if carried out: but perhaps it would be better that you should communicate with them before getting to work. Additions to Bibliography of G. Santayana 1880 Lines on Leaving the Bedford Street Schoolhouse (privately printed) 1881–2 Latin School Register: Sonnet on President Garfield. Brief History of the Class of ’82. Parody of The Aeneid ,/ (running through several numbers,/).
5:142
The Letters of George Santayana
1884. Free Will. Harvard Crimson Supplement, (Sophomore English Thesis) 1891. April, Atlantic Monthly. Review of m W— James’s Psychology3 (unsigned). 1899. July, Harvard Monthly. Review of Lucifer. (signed “H. M.”). 1903. April—June. (Columbia) Journal of Comparative Literature. Croce’s Aesthetics. 1904. Oct. Oberlin Alumni Magazine. Tradition & Practice (Baccalaureate Address). No. 159. Partly reprinted in “Biosophical Review, Summer Issue 1934 ^ ^ No. 161. Reprinted in Life & Letters. Aug. 1934 Also: Many Nations in One Empire The New Frontier, Sept. 1934 to appear in Feb. 1935. Foreford to “Leopardi” by the Marchesa Iris Origo, Oxford Univ. Press. Also, Latin School Register, 1930 (?) Fragment from Catullus (verse), same, 1932, Glimpses of Old Boston 1
“Croce’s Aesthetics,” Journal of Comparative Literature, 1 (1903): 191–95. While a philosophy student at Columbia, George Lawton (1900–1957) had written Santayana, urging him to give up metaphysics and devote his time to literary criticism. 3 Atlantic Monthly, founded in Boston in 1857, is a magazine of literature, art, and politics. The review of James’s The Principles of Psychology appeared in issue 67 ([April 1891]: 552–56). 2
To George Lawton 20 October 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Unknown)
Rome, Oct. 20, 1934 Dear Mr. Lawton What can I say except that I am deeply gratified at such an interest as you show in my writings, and at your project? But it happens that Scribner’s has something very like it in view, and I understand that my friend Prof. Irwin Edman has undertaken the work. You doubtless know him. Get into communication with him or with Scribner’s. It is possible that he has abandoned the idea (he has never mentioned it to me personally) and that the field is clear for you: or that your plans are so different as not to interfere. The latter is the case, I expect, in respect to another project, this time of Messrs. Buchler and Schwartz of the Butler
1933–1936
5:143
Library at Columbia (I am much favoured in that latitude) who wish to collect my scattered reviews and short articles—some of them, I mean— into a miscellany. But perhaps you might communicate with them also, to make things quite safe and clear. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Charles Augustus Strong 23 October 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 23, 1934 Dear Strong I am very sorry you are laid up, but perhaps this accident will oblige you to change your austere habits a little in favour of more comfort and more recumbancy. You could so easily spend the morning in bed, not choked with a shr/ irt-collar, and reading or writing in the sunshine of your corner room. It would not only rest your sore spot, but your whole anatomy. I have been obliged to give a note of introduction to you to Professor Michele Losacco of Catania,1 who seems to be a sort of Italian Benjamin Rand.2 He wouldn’t accept any excuses or evasions, and will certainly present himself and ask you a lot of questions. He is an appreciative critic, with realistic and Catholic tendencies. I am not going to send Russell’s book after all to Cory, but to Mrs. Toy.3 I think it will give her pleasure, whereas Cory is rather disdainful of things a little off his own line. Yours ever G.S. 1
Michele Losacco (b. 1871) wrote “Due ‘Selections’ filosofiche di George Santayana” (Revista de Filosofia Neo-Scholastica 30 [1938]: 305–18). 2 Benjamin Rand (1856–1934) received his A.B. from Harvard in 1879 and was a philosophy instructor there from 1897 to 1902. Beginning in 1906 he served as librarian of the philosophy library. 3 Possibly Freedom Versus Organization, 1814–1914 (W. W. Norton & Co., 1934).
5:144
The Letters of George Santayana
To Charles Augustus Strong 24 October 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller) Rome, Oct. 24, 1934
Dear Strong This is to introduce Professor Michele Losacco of whom I have written to you, and who is at present in Florence. Yours ever GSantayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 26 October 1934 [postmark ] • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 27, 1934. Dear Cory There is a marked change of tone in your letters, of Oct. 5 and 24, about Eliot’s proposal.1 Has something happened to change your view? Perhaps I ought to have acknowldged your first letter at once, but I was in the act of leaving Venice and settling down here, and I left it on purpose until I should write in any case at the end of the month. It doesn’t seem to me that Eliot was impertinent or is generally an ass. He is prim, as he himself has said; and it is probably quite true that I am ignored by the English critics, especially on the philosophical side, and quite intelligibly. I am a back number, partly in age, partly in manner. Philosophers now are expected to be thoroughly confused in general, and very scholastic in detail. This doesn’t matter: and I think it just as well that you shouldn’t trouble about introducing, or re-introducing my later philosophy to the public for the present. In ten years, or when the wind changes, will be time enough. But we oughtn’t to be rude to Eliot: and I will reply to his letter myself, and perhaps send him one of my Dominations & Powers articles. Yes, we will begin the revision of The Last Puritan when you have received the last part, and send me your notes on the beginning. I shall then be ready myself for a fresh inspection of the whole with a fresh mind. At present I am revising—only as a sort of proof-reading—Part V, before having it typed.
1933–1936
5:145
Poor Strong is laid up with a sore bottom, from too much sitting on it. I tell him this may be a blessing in disguise, if it accustoms him to lie down more. Flatness is as delicious physically as it is odious mentally. Yours affly G.S. 1
Cory wrote T. S. Eliot about publishing something by Santayana in Criterion (Years, 142).
To Evelyn Tindall 2 November 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Texas)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 2, 1934 Dear Miss Tindall My novel is finished and I went today to your place to ask if you had returned, and was told that possibly you might be here in December. I hope you may come, because I hate to trust my only MS to the post—perhaps a foolish fear—or to give it to anyone else to do. I should be much obliged if you would tell me how matters stand. Don’t trouble if you hear that I asked at the Pensione White1 for a parcel which I hadn’t received. They had forgotten — it here, at the Hotel Bristol, that they had received it and hidden it in some corner. This afternoon, by a curious coincidence, they rediscovered it, and I found it wait^^ ing for my return. I wasn’t seriously disturbed by this complication, because even if the parcel had been really lost, I have one copy of the MS, which in strictness is all that I need Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Miss Tindall lived at number 11, Via Vittoria Colonna, in Rome.
5:146
The Letters of George Santayana
To Charles Augustus Strong 3 November 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 3, 1934 Dear Strong George’s letter is certainly most interesting and shows him in his double aspect, admirable, devoted, full of resource, capable of hard work and perpetual industry, and on the other hand incapable of shaking off his early atmosphere. It would be inaccurate to say he was feeding his wife and children by keeping a gambling house, but that is the direction of this last extraordinary expedient. Complicated as the situation is, his letter rather makes me feel that I should like to go to San Remo and see the establishment at work. Why shouldn’t you do so, when you feel the need of a change? I am reading Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit—difficult at first but of unmistakably superior quality. Can you tell me what überantworten1 means exactly? I gather it is something like “crediting with” or “making responsible for”, but don’t feel sure. He uses the word repeatedly. And being in the field of German words, can you tell me if Weh dir, wenn du ein Enkel bist2 is a correct quotation. It comes, I think, in Mephistopheles’ advice to Wagner in Faust. I am glad you are well again and able to drive, and I take for granted that you have adopted some means of preventing a recurrence of the trouble The American Communists are paying me some attentions, and I have written an article—not quite Bolshy3—for one of their books. Yours ever G.S. 1
Deliver over (German). “Woe unto thee, that thou art a grandson born!” is from Goethe’s Faust where Mephistopheles is talking to the “Student” (I, line 1655). 3 Bolshevism was one of two main branches of Marxist socialism in Russia from 1903 to 1918. The Bolsheviki (majority members), led by Lenin, advocated immediate revolution and establishment of dictatorship of the proletariat. 2
1933–1936
To Nancy Saunders Toy 4 November 1934 • Rome, Italy
5:147
(MS: Unknown) Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 4, 1934
Dear Mrs. Toy Many thanks for Ropes’ lectures,1 which I am sending back since the book seems to be a present to you from Mrs. Ropes. I have ventured to make a few marginal notes, especially towards the beginning, which you can easily rub out if they annoy you. They express a certain undercurrent of dissatisfaction in my mind with a radical confusion or embarrassment which Ropes seems to me to share with all Protestant Bible-critics. Their object is a lay object: to discover the facts or scientific probabilities about the facts as an unbeliever might admit them. But their spirit and presuppositions are religious: they care enormously about the historical Jesus, because they, too, are Christians, and must accept whatever the real Jesus taught: or rather, because being Christians they, too, are inspired, and have a living picture of Jesus in their minds or hearts which they are bound to confirm, or at least to develop congenially. The reader, says Ropes, hardly notices how different the Jesus of the fourth gospel is from that of the synoptics, because they are all portraits of the same person. He forgets that the same thing happens when you read of God in Genesis, or in Aristotle, or in Spinoza: not that there is one prior exciting person, God, that is strikingly like himself in these various portraits, but that the religious reader has his eye on his own God; and that sense in him of a single real and familiar Power unifies all the accounts or portraits for him as meaning his own God, however opposite the actual traits in those portraits may be, as the connoisseur in painting would perceive them. The early Christians, even the apostles, were not interested at all in the historical Jesus, but as Ropes says, in the theological and eschatological Jesus Christ that was the object and hope of their religion. Indeed, Ropes at the beginning and at the end points out this religious—he might have said liturgical—function and purpose of the written gospels. They were parts of the mass, like the collects; they were improvised recitals, condensed or expanded of legends and prophecies current in those illuminated circles, where the spirit was always talking through this and that mouth; and they were written down, like the rest of the liturgy, when the abundance of
5:148
The Letters of George Santayana
inspirations became confusing, and order had to be brought out of spontaneity. New Testament criticism will never become straightforward and clear until two things happen together which as yet occur only separately: that the spirit and presuppositions of the critic should be thoroughly secular and scientific, and that his object should be purely religion itself, i.e., the religious feeling, imagination, and tradition in the New Testament writers. We must substitute a scientific interest in religion for a religious interest in science; otherwise both religion and science will be muddled. I have sent you Bertrand Russell’s history of the Nineteenth Century, because in reading it I found so many capital and instructive things that I lost sight of his horrible blindnesses, and thought you might enjoy the book. He has the wit of the old mellow diplomats in his blood, and that in part clarifies even his fanaticism. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 James Hardy Ropes (1866–1933), a New Testament scholar at Harvard, is remembered principally for his work reorganizing Phillips Academy, for his editorship of the Harvard Theological Review (1921–33), and for his scholarly work The Text of Acts (1926). The Synoptic Gospels was published by Harvard University Press in 1934.
To Victor Wolfgang von Hagen 6 November 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Unknown) Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 6, 1934
Dear Dr. von Hagen1 It is very kind of you to keep up an interest in my doings at such a distance, material and professional. I think I should like Quito,2 and the existence of some superior minds in such a remote and isolated place does not surprise me. If there were more intellectual retreats there would be more intellectual power. The mediocrity of everything in the great world of today is simply appalling. We live in intellectual slums. I don’t know how far your information comes down in respect to my writings. My last book was “Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy”, containing a lecture—my last lecture on earth—on Locke, and some other papers. But I had been that same autumn (1932) to The Hague to a Spinoza congress, and read an address at the Domus
1933–1936
5:149
Spinozana on “Ultimate Religion”. It has appeared with the other addresses made at the Congress in a large polyglot volume entitled Septimana Spinozana, published by Nijhoff at the Hague.* The great event for me, however, has been the completion of The Last Puritan, a sort of novel I began to write 45 years ago. It won’t be published for some time yet, as I wish to go over it (not being a novelist) with a younger person who knows the taste of the day. With best wishes, Yours sincerely GSantayana *A Spanish translation by Antonio Marichalar appeared last year in the Revista de Occidente (Ortega y Gasset’s3 organ). You may be able to find it in Quito! 1
Born in Saint Louis, Missouri, Victor Wolfgang von Hagen (1908–85) was educated in America, England, and Germany, receiving a doctorate at Göttingen. A naturalist, he made expeditions to Africa, Mexico, and Central and South America. His many books and articles describe his travels and discoveries. 2 Quito, Ecuador. 3 José Ortega y Gasset (1883–1955), a Spanish philosopher, wrote on Spanish and other national cultures and held that an intellectual minority should direct the masses to prevent chaos. His journal, Revista de Occidente (1923–35), was influential in introducing writers to Spain.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 12 November 1934 [postmark ] • Rome, Italy
(MS postcard: Columbia)
Rome, Nov. 12. ’94 Don’t be surprised if you don’t receive Part V of the novel until the middle of December. My part is done, but Miss Tindall is not to arrive in th Rome until Dec. 6– and, not having anyone else to do the typing, I am waiting for her, especially as she seems to count on doing the whole job. You must see the end, before definitely passing judgement on the beginning, even in details, because there are certain rhymes and correspondances which justify things that might at first seem arbitrary. I am deep in Heidegger. S. says he is well again. G.S.
5:150
The Letters of George Santayana
To Evelyn Tindall 12 November 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Texas)
Hotel Bristol, Rome, Nov. 12, 1934 Dear Miss Tindall I am glad to hear that you are relieved of anxiety at home, and that th you expect to return in December. On the 6th or 7– I will take you my MS. There is no great hurry about it. Before it goes to the publisher Mr. Cory is going to review it all for me, and suggest the shearing of what he calls “whiskered” words and other evidences of age and inexperience in ^ ^ the author. I too shall have some changes and additions to make, and perhaps some pages to ask you to recopy. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 15 November 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 15, 1934.
Dear Cory The other night in bed, when I happened not to be feeling very well, I thought that perhaps I might have to send for you, because if/n — I we— re to have any long illness, it would be rather dismal to have nobody about to — look in upon one, and cheer one up. I was all right again the next morning—merely a touch of indigestion—and thought no more of the matter. But now that you suggest coming, as if telepathically, the idea seems doubly attractive. Decide the matter entirely according to your own inclination. You are always free to live where you like: I will simply continue your allowance as usual, and pay your travelling expenses to Rome, if you decide to come. I suppose adding £20 to your usual cheque would cover them. You can then go to the Flora, or come here, or make any other arrangement that suits you. I usually lunch at the Roma, but not so constantly as of old, as in rainy weather I prefer to have an omelette and a vegetable in my own room; so that we might leave the question of lunching and having tea together—wherever you lodge—to be settled later, according to circumstance. I had vaguely thought of going to Paris next
1933–1936
5:151
summer, and from there perhaps to Dieppe, or some other place by the sea; and then to ask you to come and stay with me for a while, not so much on account of the novel, as for the sake of seeing you and comparing notes on a thousand matters. I warn you that you will find me grown much older and uglier; also deafer, and more easily tired, so that you can’t expect much pleasure from my society. If you come to Rome, I shall probably give up that plan, and go for the summer again to Cortina, where I am well and comfortable and know the ropes. Your comments on the novel are admirable: there was no need of apologizing for such mild and evidently just criticism. Not only single superfluous girlish phrases, but whole paragraphs and scenes can easily be cut out. I have cut out many in making this draft; one or two I propose to restore, including a little dialogue and speech of young Oliver’s at Salem, to justify the high opinion that Cousin Caleb1 forms of him. No doubt the old hunch-back’s speeches are too long; also many other speeches; but here is where you r advice is invaluable, because I don’t know some^^ times which part carries, and which part flags. For instance, I shouldn’t have expected you to like the Eton dithyrambs: they too can be shortened. The Salem episode is put in as an important part of Oliver’s education: it [across ] gives him a certain awareness of the Catholic and anti-Goethian point of view which he otherwise might never had had. It completes his isolation [across page one ] that he cannot accept that point of view, any more than any other that is positive. Yours affly G.S. [end across] P.S. As to Eliot, I think if you are writing an article for him about me,2 it is hardly the moment to present him with a contribution of my own as well, which after his letter it would be hard for him to reject. I am trying to make articles out of the material of Doms. & Pow’s but it is really a book, and the parts imply one another, so that it isn’t easy to extract complete fragments: besides I sent my best to Brooks Otis for his “New Frontier”, which has already appeared. So that for the present I have nothing for Eliot. Eventually, I should like to send him “Inspiration”, but [across page four] it’s not ready. 1
Caleb Wetherbee. “The Later Philosophy of Mr. Santayana,” Criterion 15 (April 1936): 379–92.
2
5:152
The Letters of George Santayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 17 November 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 17, 1934 Dear Cory It has occurred to me that, if your proposed article for The Criterion is not to be too long, it might not displease Eliot to have a few pages of my own to go with it (as a sort of intellectual snap-shot); and I have chosen the four short fragments enclosed.1 The title and paging in pencil are only in case you care to offer them to Eliot, or to anybody else. They are not an article, but an integral part of the whole argument of Dom’s & Pow’s. I haven’t yet gone over the whole MS of this: if I find something better, I will send it on, as I see you like to act as my publication agent or link with the living world. I am so glad you do: it relieves me of a lot of bother; and you must do so especially when it comes to the novel, although the way is clear, since both Constable (Mr. O. Kyllmann) and Scribners (your friend Mr. Wheelock) are thoroughly prepared. I have promised Scribner a separate edition to be printed in the US, so as to get that copyright: and Constable the same for England. I enclose a good-natured letter from Strong received this morning.2 It was German, not Greek, that I asked him about a propos of Heidegger. Yours affly G.S. 1
Unidentified. Unlocated.
2
To Victor Francis Calverton 18 November 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: New York)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London. S.W.1. Rome, Nov. 18th 1934
Dear Mr. Calverton It surprises me a little that you should seem so well pleased with my comments on your “Passing of the Gods”. I thought I had made some rather sharp criticisms of it, but let that be, since all seems to be well. I have now read your other book,1 which I really like better; but since you
1933–1936
5:153
take criticism so kindly, I will try to be as disagreeable as possible, and only tell you what I don’t like about it. This is all the easier, because in the note on p. 36 you point out the contradiction between your Chauvinism-and-Anglophobia and your Cosmopolitan Communism. You say it is temporary, like the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, to be outgrown when there are no classes and no nations. Now I happen to be, by force of personal circumstances, much more a cosmopolite than you; and it seems to me that you don’t see this Colonial-Complex, as you call it, from a sufficient distance, or impartially. There are two distinct things: Anglomania, which a very few rich Americans share with a great many Europeans of various nations, and is expressed in foot-ball, afternoon-tea, boy-scouts, and masculine clothes for women. That is a fashion which you may laugh at, but which is harmless and reasonable, as fashions go. A second, entirely different thing is the heritage (not a “complex” but the smoothest possible habit of the soul) of the English language, literature, and home. This, as you show, was middle-class, but fed from above, in people who had known Latin and even French, and were cultivated people. Naturally, when they spoke or wrote, they did so in their own way, the English way. Far from showing any prejudice against the New world, they tried pathetically to glorify it; but every day their own talent grew thinner and ghostlier, and the subject-matter which American life offered them—when not treated (as it is now-a-days) satirically—was woefully poor and uninspiring. They were morally stifled and starved. In the 1890’s, or thereabouts, I knew half a dozen young Harvard poets, Moody2 being the bes most successful of them with the public: every one of them was sim— ply killed, snuffed out, by the environment. They hadn’t enough stamina to stand up to their country and describe it, as a poet could. It was not that they imitated the English—they were ferocious Anglophobes—but that, being educated men, they couldn’t pitch their voices or find their inspiration in that strident society. I daresay now that incapacity is overcome. I have read Babbit,3 and mean to read something of Dos Passos.4 But even now, even in Emerson5 & Wm James, the chief interest is that they are Americans and — will might throw light on the American state of mind. All the world feels that America is a great phenomenon; they want to understand it. But, apart from that symptomatic or descriptive interest, nobody would read any American books. They are still poverty-stricken and bloodless; or if violent or morbid, like Moby Dick6 or Poe,7 it is rather in a psychopathic than in an artistic way that they are interesting. What you call the Colonial-complex, then, seems to me to have be en simply uni^ ^ ^ ^
5:154
The Letters of George Santayana
versal intelligence, [illegible ]natural sensibility, and good — su taste surviving in America: and it is a stronger gust of this same wind, which had rather died down in an intolerantly “petty Bourgeois” society, that now makes American writers freer. And they write, you yourself write, very much better English, that/n was written in the U.S. fifty years ago. “Dominations & Powers” is by no means ready for the press. I am publishing scraps of it—it is a collection of scraps—in occasional articles, and don’t know when the collection will seem complete enough to appear in a volume. /IYou don’t mention Kallen in your book; he is an old friend of mine and sends me his productions. Are they at all influential? Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Santayana is referring to The Liberation of American Literature (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1932), which is among the books from Santayana’s library now at Georgetown University. 2 William Vaughn Moody (1869–1910) graduated in 1893 and taught English at the University of Chicago. An American poet, dramatist, and educator, his reputation rests on a few lyrics, but the last ten years of his life were devoted to drama. He produced his play The Great Divide in 1906, and The Faith Healer was produced in Cambridge in 1909. His early death cut short a promising career. 3 Babbitt, written by Sinclair Lewis, is a satire of the American businessman originally published in 1922. 4 John Roderigo Dos Passos (1896–1970), the American novelist, was a member of the Harvard class of 1916. In 1930 he published The 42nd Parallel (New York, London: Harper and Brothers), the first novel of his U.S.A. trilogy. 5 Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), American poet, essayist, and philosopher, settled in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1835, and became the center of a major literary circle. Emerson wrote Nature (1836) and from 1842 to 1844 edited The Dial. His thought is characterized by its reliance on intuition as the way to a comprehension of reality. He was attracted to mystical Indian literature and philosophy. 6 Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (1851), by Herman Melville, is a story of whaling as well as a symbolic study of good and evil. 7 Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49), an American poet and short-story writer, is famous for his macabre imagery in works such as “The Fall of the House of Usher” and The Raven and Other Poems.
1933–1936
To Amy Maud Bodkin 22 November 1934 • Rome, Italy
5:155
(MS: Bodleian)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Nov. 22, ’94 Dear Madam1 It was very kind of you to send me your book, and you would be surprised if you knew the feeling of strangeness, as if I had forgotten my way about, with which I have read it. Not that you are not perfectly lucid, everywhere delicately perceptive and sympathetic, yet wonderfully sober, in your judgements. But you move in an enchanted world which I am afraid I never inhabited, even when I was young and felt more at home in poetry than I do now. You make me feel afresh that I was never a poet; or rather, to speak with entire frankness, that my sense for poetry has always been immersed in rhetoric, playing on the surface with rhyme, rhythm, assonance, and expressible sentiment, but grossly unaware of these haunting images and profound “experiences” of which you speak. So much so, that even after reading your book with extreme attention and a desire to understand, I am not yet sure what these archetypal patterns are: I mean, what they are ontologically. Everything in my old-fashioned mind seems to be covered by what was called “human nature” and “the passions.” We are all much alike in our capacities for feeling, as in our bodily structure. The doctors find, almost always, every organic detail in each of us exactly in its allotted place; and so the various sensuous phenomena that strike the imagination are bathed in each of us in exactly ^ ^ similar emotions. Do you think that these phenomena owe their power to the fact that they have occurred before in the experience of our ancestors? Do they operate telepathetically from one instance to another? I suspect that our historical knowledge now-a-days sophisticates our passions. When I hear the words: fidelium animæ per Dei misericordiam requiescant in pace,2 the magic of the chant lies no doubt in the universal (occasional) longing of mortal creatures to return to their mothers’ bosom or to that of Abraham3 but I may cloud or complicate that human emotion with a touch of the pathos of distance, at the thought that the same plaintive cry may have reechoed long ago in the catacombs. But this effect seems to me adventitious and unnecessary.
5:156
The Letters of George Santayana
I mention these doubts only as a proof of the intense interest with which I have followed your analysis. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Amy Maud Bodkin wrote Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination (Oxford, 1934), as well as other books. 2 “May the souls of the faithful departed through the mercy of God rest in peace” (Latin) is from an ancient Roman Catholic prayer for the dead. 3 Abraham, patriarch of the Jewish peoples, made a pact with God whereby he would follow God’s commands and in turn would become the father of nations.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 26 November 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Rome, Nov. 26, 1934 Dear Cory Very well. I shall look forward to seeing you in March or earlier. Let me know when you want your passage-money: I can send it at any time in a separate cheque. In January I shall have seen my yearly account, and if there is a margin, as I hope, we can be a little freer in our amusements. Don Giovanni,1 the best of operas, is announced for this season. It won’t be well given, it never is; but if you are here at the time at least you will get a notion of what it is like. I love the tragedy in farce, the exquisiteness in folly that make it up. I have a feeling (as of not having unlocked my bedroom door) that I didn’t make the corrections I had intended in the fragment on progress.2 I think they are faintly indicated in pencil. I was having breakfast at the time and couldn’t manage better. Use your judgement about making or ignoring them, or sending the pages p / back to me: this in case you decide to offer them to any review. I really mean this about “using your judgement”; because I am very dubious in my own mind about these political squibs. In the book they will do better, because there will be, I hope, a certain satirico-tragic impressiveness (as in Don Giovanni!) about the total view of human society given there. But the fragments, taken apart, may seem arbitrary or perverse. I will send you Part V and Epilogue when Miss Tindall arrives and copies them; and before you come I shall have gone over the whole, and indicated such corrections as seem to me advisable. You can have done
1933–1936
5:157
the same; and when you are here we can exchange and discuss our suggestions. I should be glad if the book was a “quiet success”: I am afraid some people will be angry: but if so they will help to advertise my indiscretions. One thing that has been in my own mind throughout is the difference in age in Oliver in the various parts; while not an ordinary boy, he must be a boy at first, and grow older step by step, while remaining the same person. I don’t believe in development of character; the character is always the same; but there is a progress from innocent to mature ways of giving that character expression. So too, with Mario. I think I have done it substantially, [across ] but there may be incidental anachronisms in both directions. The girlishness you object to, for instance, might pass at 16, not at 26. G.S. [across page one ] P.S. Your plan for your article seems admirable. 1 Don Giovanni (1787), an opera by Mozart with a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, is regarded as a supreme work of art. It deals with the adventures of the Spanish libertine Don Juan. 2 One of four short fragments of the manuscript of Dominations sent with his 17 November 1934 letter.
To Otto Kyllmann 28 November 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Temple)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, S.W.1 Rome, Nov. 28, 1934
Dear Mr. Kyllmann I enclose a communication1 from an American purist about errata in my Scepticism & Animal Faith. I have endorsed the corrections that seem clearly justified, and added two more, in case there should ever be a reprint. About the nor’s and the was’s I am not so sure. I think nor often justified, where the school grammars demand or; and I must have thought the subjunctive stilted; but is it required? What is the current usage? You know my English was learned late and has some Yankee vulgarisms attached to it unawares You may be interested to hear that my “novel” The Last Puritan” is finished at last. I want to go over the whole with my young friend Daniel Cory, who is coming to Rome this winter, and knows better than I how
5:158
The Letters of George Santayana
people talk and what they might find ridiculous in my old-fashioned language. In the Spring, when he returns to London, I will ask him to take you one of our two copies, and send the other to Scribner for separate printing in America?/. Or would it be better to let you print it first, and send them your proofs? I assume that the book is printable and that you will accept it, as well as Scribner. There may be one or two indiscretions about names of places and persons.—a Vicar of Iffley,2 for instance—but they can be easily removed if necessary. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Unlocated. Austin Darnley.
2
To Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz 3 December 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Brooklyn)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Dec. 3, 1934.
Dear Mr. Buchler & Mr. Schwartz I am enthusiastic about your choice of my Obiter Scripta, especially on your courage in putting in the shorter pieces, “Overheard in Seville”, “A Few Remarks,” “Proust on Essences”,1 etc. I am also glad that you have rescued the “Meanings of the Word ‘Is’.”2 On re-reading that article, I feel that it contains my whole philosophy in a very clear and succint form: I was dissuaded by a friend from putting it into “The Realm of Essence”, and also by my own feeling that it covered too much ground to go into that volume. Here it is in its place. Less satisfied I must confess myself to be about “The /t Two Idealism’/s” and about the Aesthetic articles;3 yet I glade/ly bow to your judgement, and recognize that there are scattered bits in those articles that may be worth reproducing. But I have one general qualm: Isn’t there a lot of repetition of my epistemological commonplaces? Couldn’t some repetitions be omitted? I have marked (in pencil, because I wish you to take the responsibility of deciding) some passages that I think might be left out in “Literal and Symbolic Knowledge”, in the Dewey article, and especially in “The Unknowable”.4 I quite understand your hesitation in including the latter: it is long, repeats points in the others, and perhaps belongs to a category by itself, as does “Ultimate
1933–1936
5:159
Religion”.5 On the other hand, aren’t these two precisely my best work? I think so, both in style and in “sweet reasonableness.” I have put in a copy of the Spencer lecture with the omissions suggested. I have also written three paragraphs of Preface, which I don’t send you because I should first like to see Prof. Cohen’s Introduction.6 I mustn’t either contradict him or say just what he says; but I should like to end my Preface with some reference to what he may [illegible ]have written. The three paragraphs co mposed are by way of personal confession and will serve in any case, I think; but they are intentionally incomplete. I am much pleased and flattered that Prof. Cohen should be willing to sponsor your volume, which I am sending back today. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 “Overheard in Seville,” The Dial (April 1927); “A Few Remarks,” Life and Letters ( January 1929); and “Proust on Essences,” Life and Letters ( June 1929). 2 “Some Meanings of the Word ‘Is’,” first published in Journal in 1915, is pages 189–212 in Obiter. 3 “The Two Idealisms,” 1–29; “What is Æsthetics,” 30–40; and “An Æsthetic Soviet,” 249–64. 4 “Literal and Symbolic Knowledge,” 108–50; “Dewey’s Naturalistic Metaphysics,” 213–40; and “The Unknowable” (the Herbert Spencer Lecture delivered at Oxford, 24 October 1923), 162–88. 5 Pages 280–97 in Obiter. 6 Morris Raphael Cohen (1880–1947), an American philosopher born in Russia, taught at the City College of New York and at the University of Chicago. He is known for his use of Socratic irony; his influential books are Reason and Nature: An Essay on the Meaning of Scientific Method (1931) and Law and the Social Order (1933). Although they never met, Cohen admired Santayana, referring to him as a “great and neglected figure” (in Chance, Love, and Logic [1923]) and used Santayana’s books as texts in his courses. Initially Cohen was to write an introduction to Obiter; later the idea was dropped.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 5 December 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Unknown) Rome, Dec. 5, 1934
Dear Cory I have received the enclosed1 (which you needn’t return) from Mr. Kyllmann, of Constable & Co. I had received from somebody in Wisconsin a list of errors in “Scepticism & Animal Faith”, chiefly cases of
5:160
The Letters of George Santayana
using “was” instead of the subjunctive (singular) “were” in conditional clauses. I asked Mr. Kyllmann what was their usage; and incidentally mentioned that the novel was finished and that I would send him a copy when I had gone over it with you. In view of what he says I am rather tempted to send him my typed copy as soon as Miss Tindall has it ready. I could make the one or two additions I have in mind, and also the omissions which you have suggested so far, before sending him the MS: and of course we could make all the other changes we liked later, even in the proofs, if the thing had been printed. If you have made notes of any more unfortunate words, phrases, or paragraphs, you might let me have them at once: but don’t bother if they are only marked in the margin of your copy, and you are too busy to go over the whole at this moment. But you might mention anything crying which you might have in mind. When you come, I could still go over the entire book with you, as I should retain the original MS. But I am not sure that it wouldn’t be better to wait and not send Mr. Kyllmann anything until after our revision. What do you think? Have I told you that a German-American-Jewish edition of my Obiter Scripta is about to be published? The editors are named Buchler and Schwartz, and the introduction is to be by Morris Cohen! It is like getting an imprimatur2 from Abraham & Moses. But the book is excellent—I think. Yours affly G.S. 1
Unlocated. License to print (Latin).
2
To Otto Kyllmann 7 December 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Temple)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, S.W.1. Rome, Dec. 7, 1934
Dear Mr. Kyllmann, I am afraid it won’t be possible for me to send you the MS of The Last Puritan before Christmas. The lady who does my type-writing has only just returned to Rome: it will take her a few days to copy Part V and the Epilogue, which are not yet typed; and I should have to read them over
1933–1936
5:161
in order to correct possible errors. Then, there are some passages I wish to insert in the earlier parts, before regarding the whole as ready to meet your eye. You needn’t fear that I shall allow my turns of phrase to be vulgarised: on the contrary, what I hope Cory will help me to do is rather to avoid clichés, or passages unnecessarily prosaic. As you will see, I am very realistic; and my tendency is to be explicit about trifles, or obvious suggestions, where novel-readers are quick to see the drift. In general the corrections will be omissions: and if I change any phrases it will be for other phrases quite as much my own. I correct myself a great deal, in any case; many scenes in this book have been rewritten several times; and I think many of the best points are afterthoughts. So that I don’t regard a final revision as a danger, but rather as one more opportunity: and I don’t want to be hurried. After 45 years taken to write a book, what are 45 days to revise it? You are very kind to take a personal interest in this book, and I hope it won’t disappoint you. It is rather sad: but I think at this moment the picture of constitutional failure and helplessness may be more acceptable to the public than it would have been ten or twenty years ago. There is no haste, as far as I am concerned, about the publication: in fact, I am not sure that it might not still be premature Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 7 December 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Unknown) Rome, Dec. 7, 1934
Dear Cory I have decided not to send the MS to Constable for the present, and have written to Mr. Kyllmann in that sense. So that you needn’t bother to do anything, or send me any comments for the moment. Yours affly G.S.
5:162
The Letters of George Santayana
To Two Bryn Mawr Students 11 December 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Unknown) Rome, Dec. 11, 1934 1
My dear Miss Jane & Miss Sylvia, What? You don’t understand “Materialism & Idealism in American Life”?2 But it was written especially for a Young Ladies’ College—Barnard College in Regent’s Park—and if not all in words of one syllable is surely all on one soft, sweet, clear, crystalline note. I know: because in order to determine what I may have meant by “moral freedom”, I have had to reread the lecture. You might at least have mentioned the page on which the peccant phrase was to be found: but I had to read almost the whole, since those words never appeared until next to the last page. You find “moral freedom” obscure, but you know perfectly well what “spiritual freedom” is: if I only had written “spiritual freedom”, I should have saved you a lot of trouble. I am sorry: and by way of apology I will tell you what I gather from the context that I must have meant to say. Moral freedom is opposed to moral prejudice or constraint: it is the faculty of expressing in feeling and action the judgements of value which are prompted by your true nature, and not by custom or convention. A man is morally free when, in full possession of his living humanity, he judges the world, and judges other men, with uncompromising sincerity. Spiritual freedom, although you know better than I what it means, might perhaps be distinguished from moral freedom in this way: that a free spirit is something in a man that judges his own nature and his own impassioned judgements, and perceives their relativity. This perception does not contradict those moral judgements: it is not a rival conscience: it is rather a super-moral speculative or mystical insight that sees the human pathos in those feelings, and somehow transcends them. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Unidentified. Chapter VI of Character.
2
1933–1936
To Amy Maud Bodkin 12 December 1934 • Rome, Italy
5:163
(MS: Bodleian)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Dec. 12, 1934 Dear Miss Bodkin, Certainly, it will be a real satisfaction to me if my words can help to show, at least, the arbitrary and egotistical way in which reviews are — re written, and to let your book stand on its own merits. I had half meant to reply to your previous letter, to say that I felt perhaps I had been unreasonable in asking what your “archetypal patterns” were ontologically. Ontologically they are essences, rather dimly defined: but their dominance and recurrence in the greater poets comes of their correspondence to perennial human passions or tricks of thought. It is this human basis for them that needs to be disentangled in the criticism or biography of the several poets in turn; and then all “woolliness” in talking about the archetypes would vanish. I had myself felt a suspicion—not justified by what you actually say, but suggested by the theme itself—that these archetypes might be conceived as mystic powers, “ancestral images”, such as Léon Daudet1 once wrote a mad book about. Then, the ontological status of these archetypes would be that of physical forces: they would be impersonal “souls” or psyches, taking possession of people’s imagination. They would belong, in my division of kinds of reality, to the realm of matter: and I am afraid the naturalists would think them fabulous. My experience makes me sympathiz/ se with you at being so unjustly criticised. “Essences”, no matter what pains one may take to explain their harmlessness and avowed non-existence in their own persons, are red rags to the modernist bull: they — hemake him blind with anger.x Yours sincerely GSantayana [across ] x at the thought of having to think! 1
Léon Daudet (1868–1942), a French journalist and writer who gave up medicine for political journalism, coedited the ultraroyalist Catholic journal L’Action Française. He wrote novels and nonfiction books, two of which are L’Hérédo (1916) and Le Monde des images (Paris: Nouvelle Libraire Nationale, 1919).
5:164
The Letters of George Santayana
To Frederick Champion Ward 14 December 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Unknown) Rome, Dec. 14, 1934
1
Dear Mr. Ward Your eulogy of me reads like an old-fashioned epitaph: strictly true to the facts but with no pretense to impartiality. It is very well expressed; and I am sending it to another friend who at this moment is writing an article about me, in case he should like to steal some of your thunder for his peroration. Would you mind? As to the “subsistence” of essence, have I ever said that it subsists? If so, it was inadvertently. That is rather the neo-realists’ word. In my vocabulary, if anything could be said to “subsist,” or be an essence with a lien on existence and a certain obduracy against contradiction, it would be TRUTH. The compulsion that the triangle exercises on us in forcing us to admit that it has three angles, equal in all to two right angles, etc, is due to the definition and to the essence of Euclidean space, in which that triangle is inscribed. But this whole geometry would be an UNEXEMPLIFIED essence, and would not “subsist,” if nature and experience had not led us to perceive and to study objects in which that essence is found, so that it is a part of the TRUTH about them. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Frederick Champion Ward (b. 1910) wrote “The Philosophy of George Santayana” as his master’s thesis (1935) at Oberlin College. His works include The Idea of a World University (1986).
To Evelyn Tindall 17 December 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Texas)
Hotel Bristol Dec. 17, 1934 Dear Miss Tindall It was a great moment for me to receive the last instalment of the novel, and see it actually officially ready to meet the public eye. However, there will be a good deal to cut out and something to add, and I may come to you later with a little more work.
1933–1936
5:165
Meantime I enclose some further fragments of Dom. & Po’rs, and 500 lire on account, in case you might find them convenient just before Christmas. With best wishes for the season Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 25 December 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Christmas Day, 1934 Dear Cory Tomorrow I expect to send you the end of the novel. I haven’t yet read your comments, except those included in your letter. They will be extremely useful, quite as much when I don’t act upon them as when I do, because they will show me where I have failed to convey my intentions. Very soon I will begin again at the beginning, and make my own revision, before consulting your notes, so as to have two independent criticisms to go by. Very often corrections are mistakes: for this reason one has to revise the revision. As to your plans about coming to Italy, do absolutely as your inclination prompts. I don’t need you, but I shall always be glad to see you, and the sooner the better. You know motors now don’t toot any more in Rome; there is only (if the order is made permanent) the noise of the motor-cycles and engines. I mention this in case it should affect your choice of quarters. Perhaps if you liked to come to the Bristol and wrote to them mentioning what the Flora offers, they might take you for the same price, as this house is by no means full. But it would be better that you should pay your own bill and come entirely on your own; you would be freer and in a more dignified position. [across ] I have a lot of interesting reading on hand, including Maritain’s Sept Leçons.1 Yours affly GS. 1 Jacques Maritain (1882–1973), a French neo-Thomist philosopher, converted to Catholicism in 1906. His work broadened the teachings of Saint Thomas Aquinas and applied them to modern life. He taught philosophy at a Catholic institute in Paris, at Columbia University, and at Princeton University, and served as French ambassador to the Vatican from 1945 to 1948. Sept leçons sur l’être et les premiers principes de la raison spéculative (Paris, 1933) was translated as A Preface to Metaphysics: Seven Lectures on Being (London and New York, 1939).
5:166
The Letters of George Santayana
To Charles P. Davis 25 December 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Hotel Bristol, Rome Christmas Day, 1934
Dear Davis Together with your letter I have received the enclosed Christmas carol, which I send on.1 If too late for this year’s feast, it will do for next year’s. Time, as you say, makes ravages, and breeds new strange things, by merely passing over us; but dates very soon lose all their importance, like the longitude of a place, when one is not obliged to travel to it from one’s own longitude. Latitude, on the contrary, is more like the time of life: it gets colder and colder as you advance towards the pole, where, though the world may go on twirling you cease to twirl with it. As to dates making no essential difference, witness this carol, which in sentiment will do for any date in which there are Christians. Apart from those effects of Old Father Time which you refer to, there is also no change in my condition. I have finished my “novel”—did you know I had been writing a “novel” for the last 45 years? To finish it has been a great relief: but I am not quite sure that it ought to be published quite yet, because it skirts very close to some real persons and places and old Boston events, and in other ways might give offence to some people: but perhaps it is no better to give them offence after one’s death than before: it is only less dangerous to one’s own peace. Eventually, I think it ought to be published as it contains a good part of my experience of life— in an entirely idealized or entirely farcical form, but still an experience very carefully collected and digested. The book is called “The Last Puritan”, and the hero is a synthesis of all my (non-Catholic) American friends. I have some Catholics in the story, to hold up the eternal verities; and also some comic characters: for instance, an old lady who says, “This is a wretched world, Mr. Oliver, a wretched world; and the worst of it is that none of us can live in it for ever.”2 Mr. Patrick T. Campbell, superintendent of the Boston public schools asks me to write something for the Third Centenary of the Latin School.3 As I walk about the seven hills of Rome4 (partly indistinguishable) I try to think of something to say worthy of both ends of the wire. [across] You left school too early to feel it to be your Alma Mater; else I should ask you for a hint. Yours sincerely GSantayana
1933–1936
5:167
1
Unlocated. See 13 March 1934 to Cory. 3 Patrick Thomas Campbell (d. 1937) became superintendent in 1920. Santayana’s “Boston Latin School 1635–1935” was published in the program The Boston Latin School. 300th Anniversary 1635–1935 (23 April 1935) and was reprinted in The Boston Herald (24 April 1935), Tercentenary History of the Boston Public Latin School by P. Holmes (1935), and Proceedings and Addresses of the Boston Latin School Tercentenary 1635–1935 by Lee J. Dunn (1937). 4 The Seven Hills of Rome include the Palatine, Aventine, Caelian, Capitoline, Esquiline, Quirinal, and Viminal. 2
To Charles Augustus Strong 27 December 1934 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Dec. 27, 1934 Dear Strong I am glad you have seen and liked “Elizabeth”. Today I receive her latest book, The Jasmine Farm; if you haven’t got it or ordered it, let me know and I will send it on to you as soon as I have read it. As to the “datum”, I wonder at your persistence in puzzling over the matter. “Datum” is a relative term: entities become data when some mind directly apprehends them. If I were rewriting my old discussions, I should avoid the word altogether, even, if possible, the phrase “given” essence, because that suggests a previous existence of the gift which somebody presents to somebody else. The direct “content of consciousness”, or entity defined by being apprehended, is not given or received: it is simply evoked in the act of apprehension, and has no hidden parts, being exactly as vague or as complex as the thought that specifies it. This thought or intuition cannot possibly specify or rest in anything but an essence: not a general term (if that is what you mean by a “universal”) but a specific quality of being which may be exemplified an infinite number of times without losing its absolute unity and identity. If we had no such essences before us to select and define and return to, we should not be able to think or to speak intelligently or to communicate an “idea”. But being a “datum” is occasional and accidental to essences, as it is to existents—(if you call perception or belief in ejects cases of “givenness”)—and your way of raising problems about “data”, as if these were established facts or events in rerum natura, which it was our business to recognize correctly, seems to me entirely beside the mark. There are no such self-
5:168
The Letters of George Santayana
delimited facts as “data”; anything is a “datum” to which anybody wishes to attach that name. Doubtless in the total event called perception something might be picked out to correspond to any careful definition of the “datum”. Locke says nobody can have knowledge of the taste of a pineapple unless he has eaten one: what is the “datum” in that experiment? The pineapple? So Whitehead would say. The taste? And would that mean the effect of eating the pineapple upon the palate, etc? Or would it mean the flavour as a pure phenomenon, as an essence which many sensations might repeat or evoke unanimously? It is the effect on the psyche that is a fact in nature, particular, and occupying its point in the physical space and time. The feeling or intuition is the spiritual or intellectual overtone of that total effect; but it has not itself for its object: its object is the ^ ^ pineapple or the act of eating it, with the whole effect of that on the organism: but the essence evoked is nowhere: it is a moral term. In spite of Locke, an organism might perfectly well evoke the flavour of the pineapple by chemical metabolism, even if no pineapple had ever existed Yours ever G.S.
To Victor Francis Calverton 10 January 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: New York)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Jan. 10, 1935 Dear Mr. Calverton We mustn’t prolong this discussion for ever, because while we agree about the facts (or should agree if I were better informed) we make a different diagnosis and have different expectations. You think the American baby was weak and puling for a hundred years because it had never cut its umbilical cord, when there were plenty of native green apples and native whisky on which it might have grown up healthy and vigorous; whereas I think that that umbilical cord (the genteel tradition) scarcely sufficed to keep its thin soul alive under the pressure of bleak winter and child labour. You speak of “American culture”: what is that? I have known American lack of culture, and American cultivated people: but they we re Americans in their residence and in their persons, not in their cul^ ^ ture. There —ir culture came in part through England, but ultimately rather from France, Italy, and ancient Greece: for there can’t be a native culture except where there are no known moral derivations or origins, as was
1933–1936
5:169
practically the case in Greece, in Egypt, and in China. In the modern world, all nations have, and can’t help having, the same culture, communication and information being so permeating and relentless as they are. You are a prophet of American intellectual independence: but you draw your philosophy and politics from Germany via Russia. I haven’t received the December number of The Modern Monthly, in which you said you intended to print my article. If or when it comes out, I should be much obliged if you would send me one or two copies, as I sent you the original manuscript and have no duplicate. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To George Sturgis 14 January 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Jan. 14, 1935 Dear George Your letter, with your yearly account, has arrived sooner than I expected it, and is most satisfactory. I knew in general that things hadn’t got notably worse, but it must be due to your skill and care that you have obtained an increase both in income and in the value of the capital. An increase of $40,000 (not counting $7000 savings) would in other days have meant a small fortune, acquired as if by magic: but nowadays we feel less secure in the possession of money, both because its own value is uncertain and because our sense of ownership is less absolute. Roosevelt, by a stroke of the pen, might reduce us to dollars worth what in California they call “bits”—the smallest sum known there in the good old days; and the Marxians—all my Jewish literary friends seem to have turned Marxian—might strip us even of those remi/nants. But for the moment there seems to be no danger of this. The communists complain that the American working-man is a lower middle-class person in his mind, and doesn’t recognize his proud humanity as a pure proletarian: and even further inflation doesn’t seem imminent: besides, if inflation were general, it might not be so ruinous to those of us who have to change our dollars into foreign currencies as was the abandonment of the gold standard a year a/or two ago, only by England & the U.S. On the whole, I feel that I may go on living as I do, without much anxiety: and that is all that personally matters to me. The arrangement that I
5:170
The Letters of George Santayana
proposed last year—a letter of credit for $6000 and $2000 transferred to my London account—will cover all my wants, and leave a handsome margin for any emergency, or to be added to the capital. My present letter of credit will suffice until May or June I haven’t yet sent the novel to the publishers. Cory is coming to Rome next month and we are going to go over it together—he has already read it and made notes—so as to correct any repetitions, or too long speeches, or other blemishes that we may find in it. As a whole, I think it will do: but it is very long, 794 large type-written pages! I don’t know what the publishers will think of that. But it isn’t an ordinary novel—something more like Wilhelm Meister1 or Don Quixote, if I may modestly place myself in good company. Yours affly G.S. 1
Wilhelm Meister is the central character of Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship, 1795–96) and Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (Wilhelm Meister’s Travels, 1829). The novels relate Meister’s progress from naïve, excitable youth to responsible manhood. Geothe develops his ideas on a wide variety of subjects. Meister finally discovers his true calling as a surgeon.
To Sylvia Hortense Bliss 19 January 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & C o– 123, Pall Mall, London Rome, Jan. 19. 1935
My dear Miss Bliss1 I should have thanked you sooner for “Sea Level” if I hadn’t followed your injunction to read it by bits; after which I have reread it more or less as a whole, in search of your philosophy. You must have felt that I should sympathize with this, else you wouldn’t have thought of sending me the book. Your perfect freedom from religious or mock-religious presumptions—and also from hostility to religion—your clear view of truth, and your sound naturalism do appeal to me very much. I have always felt, what you express in regard to trees especially, that our relation to the rest of nature is fraternal, and that the possession of consciousness or (if we possess it) of reason doesn’t justify us in regarding plants, animals, or stars as unreal, or as made for our express benefit. And the sea, though you speak little of it, has always been a great object lesson to me, a monitor of
1933–1936
5:171
the fundamental flux, of the loom of nature not being on the human scale. So far, if I don’t misrepresent you, we agree. But I am ill conditioned to appreciate your knowledge and love of flowers and of the countryside generally; and I have been so immersed all my life in religious speculation, in literature, in history, and in travel; I have lived so exclusively in towns and universities, and amid political revolutions and wars, that your simple idyllic world, and your intense individualism, leave me rather with a sense of emptiness. And haven’t you that sensation yourself? I don’t know what trials you may have had to endure or what misfortunes; your individualism is wholly philosophical, it touches the Ego in its transcendental capacity, and you tell us nothing of your own person; but your tone in speaking of death, of cities, and of the mediation of other minds between you and nature, seems to me overcharged with distaste and melancholy. Aren’t men also a part of nature? And if we could really penetrate into the life of matter, shouldn’t we find it everywhere essentially as wasteful, groping, and self-tormented as is the life of mankind? And on this fundamental irrationality, human society builds so many charming things—music, for one, which you appreciate—but also material and moral splendours of every description. The refraction of truth in human philosophies, for instance, is no mere scandal: it composes a work of human art, and partakes of the force both of truth and of imagination. It seems to me a pity, therefore, to leave it out of one’s field of interest. Let me add that I appreciate the level dignity of your style and dic^^ tion. You are doubtless aware that you often lapse into blank verse, and that, if you chose, you could print your book in that form with very little alteration. You have preferred a more modern arrangement, doubtless for good reasons; but you will deceive nobody into mistaking you for a real modern, like Mr. Ezra Pound, for instance, whose Quia Pauper Amavi2 I had been reading immediately before receiving your book. But though your restrained voice may not attract attention so scandalously, I am sure that you will give more pleasure to those who do hear you, and will be more gratefully remembered. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Sylvia Hortense Bliss (1870–1963), an American poet, wrote several books of poetry including Sea Level (North Montpelier, Vt.: The Driftwind Press, 1933). Her papers and correspondence reflect an interest in botany, psychology, and philosophy. 2 Quia Pauper Amavi, a volume of poetry, was published in London (Egoist Press) in 1919.
5:172
The Letters of George Santayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 24 January 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Rome Jan. 24, 1935 Dear Cory My estimable nephew has sent me a charming yearly account; a slight gain in income and a vast nominal gain capital! Still, I am not dazzled or inclined to spend recklessly, because the ghosts of Inflation, Communism, and Taxes are always with us. However, I am all right for the moment, and may draw freely on my letter of credit as well as replenish my London bank account when required. When you are here I shall be able to give you your allowance in Italian money—say 2500 lire a month—and you needn’t bother about pounds sterling and the exchanges. Let me know if £20 will cover your travelling expenses, and I will send you the money on Feb. 15th to London. Certainly you should see this new Hamlet. When I saw the portrait— there is no name to it—I said to myself: “This is Hamlet himself. Where did they get the picture?” Then after a moment I wondered it it could be you: the face is very like yours: only the hair looked too natural for a wig.1 Then I read reasonably and learned the facts. I am quite ready to believe that he is better than Forbes Robertson, who was simply inoffensive, not an actor of any native power. He is also likely to be better than Irving, who was fundamentally absurd, although with a certain suggestion of poetry à la Merideth:2 affected, pre-Raphaelite3 and Bohemian. John Gielgud seems to be natural, young, pensive, and deep: but there is one thing he probably is not, namely, princely.4 Shakespeare’s Hamlet is princely: in those days it was a quality people had before their eyes, and understood inwardly; but now we all live intellectually in Bloomsbury. Next Sunday, if they give Verdi’s Don Carlo at the opera, I shall go in hopes that the Italians may still know how to be grand: Philip II and Don Carlos demand the grand manner.5 I am afraid, by the way, that Don Giovanni will be given before you arrive. I am sorry, but you will have other chances of hearing it, and this performance may not be very good Naturally I am much pleased that you should take the end of the ^ ^ novel so seriously, and should feel the movement of the whole. The war, as you suggest, was a great help, because it gave me a setting for the conclusion: but the theme and the tragic necessity were there from the beginning; so that the unity is not artificial or an afterthought. We will discuss
1933–1936
5:173
this, as well as the minor corrections, at leisure. I want to discover just what you have gathered from various difficult episodes towards the middle, before I tell you what my intentions were: but they were very precise, in the case of all the characters and of Oliver’s reaction upon each. Yours affly G.S. 1
Cory was prematurely rather bald (Years, 146). Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson (1853–1937) and Sir Henry Irving (1838–1905) were both actors and theater managers. Irving was the first actor to be knighted. Merideth is probably George Meredith (1828–1909), the English novelist, poet, and critic. He hated egotism and sentimentality and supported the intellectual equality of women. Above all, he believed in the medicinal quality of laughter, that comedy corrects the excesses of sentimentality, selfishness, and vanity. He wrote The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative (London: C. Kegan Paul & Co., 1879) and Evan Harrington (London: Bradbury & Evans, 1861). 3 Pre-Raphaelitism was practiced by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of artists and poets formed in London in 1848. This group stressed rejection of academism which they traced to Raphael and the High Renaissance; they had a religious and moralizing cast. 4 Sir Arthur John Gielgud (b. 1904), an English actor who appeared in classic as well as contemporary plays, also performed in movies and on television in England and America. Earlier that month Cory had seen Gielgud’s Hamlet in London. Impressed, he had sent Santayana a photograph of Gielgud as Hamlet (Years, 146). 5 Don Carlos (1545–68) was a Spanish prince, the son of Philip II by his first wife, Mary of Portugal. Philip II (1527–98), king of Spain, succeeded to the throne in 1556 upon his father’s abdication. Don Carlos’s mother died at his birth. Mentally and physically unsound, Don Carlos was subject to fits of rage. He hated his father and was imprisoned by him. The prince died a few months later. His story is the subject of Schiller’s tragedy Don Carlos, on which Verdi based his opera Don Carlos (1867). 2
To Frederick Champion Ward 26 January 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Unknown)
Rome, Jan. 26, 1935 Dear Mr. Ward, Thank you for your letter and your first installment of my “life.” Both require some reply: first, about this matter of “subsistence.” You speak of the status of an essence “between” its exemplifications: but non-existents have no position: they have only eternal affinities: so that there is no distance, essentially, “between” one exemplification of an essence and another. What intervenes is the flux of existence in which, by hypothesis, that essence is absent. So that I should distinctly refuse to speak of it as “subsisting” during that interval.
5:174
The Letters of George Santayana
Your account of my vida y milagros1 (as we say in Spanish) is so largely composed of quotations from my own confessions that I can only admire your tact in selecting them, and particularly in using old verses to clarify later events. I haven’t evolved, except as I was involved: and almost the only point at which you seem to misrepresent a little the truth of my history is in saying that I was “converted” to naturalism. No: it was not a conversion, but a decision. Both views had always been before me: I had hesitated or oscillated: but gradually it became impossible for me steadily to hold the Catholic position: the history and psychology of it, in the other picture, shone through; as if, through a too-thin back-drop at the theatre, I had seen the ropes and scaffolding of the stage, the scene-shifters hurrying about in their shirtsleeves, and the prima donna in her green-room, putting on the rouge. Still, though my judgement has hardened in maturity, I have by no means lost my taste for religious drama. Only yesterday I finished a lovely German book by Adolph Erman on Egyptian religion,2 laying it down with regret that I hadn’t the learning requisite to write (entirely differently) on the same subject: because the author has no imagination, no religious feeling, and misses the immense persuasiveness and the immense tragedy of his subject. A minor matter on which your emphasis is perhaps a little excessive is in my isolation in America. I was lieutenant colonel of the Boston Latin School regiment, I acted in the Institute and Hasty Pudding3 plays at Harvard, dressed as a leading lady and a ballet dancer, I was devoted (as a spectator) to football, and had for years, after I was an instructor, many close friends among the undergraduates. I also went a good deal into what was called “Boston society.” So that my solitude (which was real) was only latent: I had a great many pleasant relations with the world: and, I ought to add, was always very fond of travel, and of life in cafes and restaurants, which I still frequent, as well as public gardens, with the nurses and children, and the military bands. You will discover this side of me more clearly when my novel appears, which is now finished, but may not be published at once for various reasons. Another point. In my novel there is hardly a word about Spain: but if I ever write the autobiography I have in mind, Spain will come into its own in my life. It has always been a fundamental fact. That I have always retained my legal Spanish nationality has not been an accident or an affectation: it has been a symbol of the truth. Until the recent death of my sisters (who had returned to Spain) I went almost every year to Avila, living en famille4 there. It was only officially, on my literary side, that Spain counted for little.
1933–1936
5:175
I mention these points because I think your account of me will be so sympathetic and penetrating that I want you not to miss any important fact. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Used in earlier times to refer to a saint’s life and miracles, this expression refers, rather humorously, to anyone’s life and works. 2 Adolph Erman (1806–77), a reknowned professor of Egyptology, compiled a dictionary of hieroglyphics. Erman’s A Handbook of Egyptian Religion was published by Constable (London) in 1907. 3 In 1825 Harvard’s the Speaking Club became The American Institute of 1770 and continued existence under a portion of that name until absorbed in turn by the Hasty Pudding Club over a century later. Founded in 1795, the Hasty Pudding (a Harvard social club housed in Stoughton Hall) held its first theatricals in 1844. Santayana portrayed a female ballet dancer in an 1886 production. 4 With my family (French).
To Evelyn Tindall [February 1935] • Rome, Italy
(MS: Texas) Hotel Bristol, Tuesday
Dear Miss Tindall I am very sorry you are going away, if this means that you are not likely to return; but let us hope that Rome will call you back next year. Here are two sections of Dom. & P’rs. If this oversteps your fund, please let me know; if it doesn’t exhaust the credit, don’t, plas —ease, return the balance, as I shall have other sections soon which I can send on to London. As to the novel, I expect most of the changes will be omissions or substitutions of single words, which can be done in ink; and if there are additions, Mr. Cory, who is coming next month and says he will bring his type-writer, may perhaps condescend to copy them, and I will arrange the insertion. I have already numbered all the pages consecutively in blue pencil: there are 794! The publisher may not like this, but my novel is not a novel. Yours sincerely GSantayana
5:176
The Letters of George Santayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 10 February 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 10, 1935
Dear Cory There are many advantages in having you come to this hotel, if you can stand it. You will have the exclusive use of my sitting-room from 11.30 to 5 o’clock; and after 5 o’clock, though I shall be there, you may always come in without fear of disturbing me, because I am only reading, and reading nothing usually that requires much concentration of thought. ^ ^ You will see that the room is larger and better than the one I had formerly, and very sunny. As you are to be on half pension, like me, I shall expect you to come to lunch with me every day (except when the weather is bad) as in the old days. I will pay for your lunch, of course: but as that will add a good deal to my daily expense (as well as pleasure) I think I might cut down your allowance a little and give you 500 lire a week instead of 2500 a month, as I had promised. Your hotel bill, with 10% for service, and something for washing and drinks, will be about 350 lire a week, leaving you 150 a week for pocket-money. It’s not much; unless you have some other source of income as well, but if you feel cramped you can always leave the Bristol and reduce your fixed expenses, so as to have more loose cash. Look me up—room 77, at the front end of the passage—when you arrive, unless it is after 10.30 p.m when I usually go to bed: and I don’t reappear, dressed and ready to go out, until about 1 p.m. so that at 12, when I am having my bath, you mustn’t expect to see me. I don’t know what room they will give you: it may not be very nice. The long wing in the rear has been cut off and demolished: only the square part of the hotel remains, and the rear rooms may be noisy and dusty, as they are building in the vacant lot that has been cleared. I have just got, in my revision of the novel, to the Caleb Wetherbee scene, and I think I see how the old man’s speeches can be shortened without injury to his function in the plot. He must be allowed to speechify, no matter how much, to impress Oliver, but not at all to express me.1
1933–1936
5:177
Your notes I am keeping, still unread, for comparison after my own revision is complete. Yours affly G.S. 1
See Puritan, Part II, chapter XIV.
To George Sturgis 18 February 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 18th 1935 Dear George th Yours of the 8– has just arrived, and I interrupt my revision of the novel at p. 400, (about half-way) to reply at once. I had rather expected to go to Paris this year, but one of my objects was to see Cory and get his opinion about some verbal matters in The Last Puritan about which my own judgement wavers. But he says he would rather come at once to Rome, and I am expecting him this week. That will make it unnecessary (as far as the novel is concerned) that I should make that journey: and I know no tempting place in or near Paris in which I could be comfortably settled for the summer. Even the old hotel I was at in Versailles is now shut up. So that I shall probably go to Venice and Cortina. However, nothing is settled; and if you can recommend some charming spot in or near Paris—or anywhere else—where I could have quiet and coolness and pleasant walks, I should be only too glad to go and meet you there. Cory’s coming to Rome will involve a good deal of extra expense for me, and I shall be drawing rather more freely on my letter of credit. However, it will last the full year, to May 1–st, as was originally intended: and if you will send me the new one (to Thos. Cook & Son-Wagons-Lits) by that time I should be much obliged My idea is to leave Rome rather early this year and stop for some weeks in Venice before going up to Cortina: that is an economical thing to do, as in Venice I have no sittingroom, and take both my principal meals in restaurants. One effect of old age is that days and weeks seem to pass more quickly: there is hardly time to do anything, and evening and Sunday come round when you thought it was Wednesday or the early afternoon. I suppose the tempo of one’s own blood-vessels, or whatever keeps time within us, has grown slower, and we glide over events as if they were nothing capable of
5:178
The Letters of George Santayana
leaving a mark because our brains are too soft to retain new impressions. It’s not at all an unpleasant condition, [across ] though a bit ignominious, like all decay. A Mr. Keene, 79 years old, came to see me yesterday and told stories by rote.1 He said he [across page one] enjoyed his visit, and I believe him. But he knows that I won’t return it. Yours affy G.S. 1
Unidentified.
To Corliss Lamont 5 March 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Unknown)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co. 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, March 5, 1935 Dear Mr. Lamont:1 Thank you very much for your book2 and your letter. As far as your argument is concerned, you know that you are preaching to the converted. The subject of immortality has long ceased to be a living issue with me; and though I know that some people agonize about it, I am confirmed in my old impression that this is a verbal or mythical obsession of the human mind, rather than a literal belief. Everything, in myth and religion must be understood with a difference, in a Pickwickian sense, if we are to understand it truly, and not to import an unnatural fanaticism into the play of poetic fancy. I have been particularly struck by your quotation from Keyser, on p. 129.3 I suppose he has got this from Heidegger, whom you don’t mention, but who, as you doubtless know, has made a great deal of this notion of death as the totality of life, or as I should say, as the truth of life, which is something eternal. With this insight on the one hand, and the insight that life is movement, on the other hand, I think a rather new and profound analysis might be made of the notion of immortality. Orthodox heavens are peaceful: souls are not supposed to change and pass through new risks and adventures: they merely possess, as in Dante, the truth of their earthly careers and of their religious attainment. In other words, souls in heaven are mythical impersonations of the truth or totality of those persons’ earthly life. At the same time, this life, and anything truly living, is something dramatic, groping, planning, excited, and exciting. It is dangerous: and Nietsche needn’t have told us to live perilously: it would have
1933–1936
5:179
been enough to tell us to live. Put these two points together and you have a demonstration of the necessary transitiveness and finitude of any real life. On hearing that you belonged to the Delphic Club, I took the Catalogue of 1932, which I happen to have here, to see what class you were in, and incidentally I glanced over the early lists of names more familiar to me. Those are very pleasant memories: and they illustrate our philosophy of life: because it is what those young men were then, in the flush of youth, that is worth returning to and congratulating oneself upon, and seldom, perhaps never in the end, the later transformations which they may have undergone.4 Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Corliss Lamont (1902–95), humanist, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union, author, and lecturer, was educated at Harvard (A.B., 1924), New College, Oxford, and Columbia. Lamont collected Santayana’s manuscripts, letters, photographs, and books, which he donated to the Butler Library of Columbia University. His uncle, Hammond Lamont, was a member of Santayana’s Harvard class of 1886. 2 The Illusion of Immortality (New York: Putnam’s, 1935). 3 Cassius Jackson Keyser (1862–1947) authored works on mathematics, logic, and mathematical philosophy. “Thus Professor C. J. Keyser in his most suggestive essay on ‘The Significance of Death’ writes: ‘Temporal finitude of life is essential to its worth’; and ‘were it not for death, if life did not end, if it were a process of infinite duration, it would be devoid of the precious things that make us long for everlasting perpetuation. … All the sacred values that constitute life a priceless boon are subtly bred in the allpervasive sense of temporal finitude. Death is not the tragedy of life; it is a limitation of life, essential to its beatitude; the tragedy is that, if it were not for death, life would be void of worth.’ ” 4 At a Delphic Club banquet, Lamont proposed a toast in honor of Santayana’s seventieth birthday.
To Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz 12 March 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Brooklyn)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, March 12, 1935 Dear Mr. Buchler & Mr. Schwartz I am glad to have news of your labours and am not surprised about the attitud of Scribner’s. They have always treated me with consideration, yet,
5:180
The Letters of George Santayana
very naturally, business is business, and in their case it is carried on with a view to largish profits, ultimate if not immediate. The Columbia Press must be in a different case, and if they feel that, at a time like the present, they can’t run the risk of positive loss on a publication, it might be possible to make some arrangement guaranteeing them against it. I drop this hint, without going into details, merely to keep up your courage, if matters take on an unpromising turn. I should be very sorry to have the book given up, after all the trouble you have taken, and the pleasant prospect we had of seeing it soon in print. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Charles Augustus Strong 26 March 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller) Hotel Bristol, Rome March 26 1935
Dear Strong Cory is thinking of staying here until after Easter, and your visit will enable him to see you here, and to go back directly to England when he leaves. I am glad you are coming as usual, and shall look you up at the Aragno th on April 15– Yours ever G.S.
To Henry Seidel Canby 27 March 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Virginia)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, March 27, 1935 Dear Mr. Canby I spent yesterday evening looking into Mather’s “Concerning Beauty”, and I don’t think it calls for special comment.1 It isn’t bad in its own class, but isn’t the class unnecessary? If I had more time and energy to spare, I
1933–1936
5:181
might take it as a text for some observations on American perspectives. But I can’t do it now, and perhaps it is better not to do it at all. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Frank Jewett Mather Jr. (1868–1953) wrote many books of criticism, including Concerning Beauty (Princeton University Press, 1935). He taught at Williams Collge (1893–1900) and was professor of art and archaeology at Princeton (1910–33). He was art critic for the New York Evening Post and other newspapers.
To George Sturgis 29 March 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome March 29, 1935 Dear George The new letter of credit arrived some time ago, and so long before I expected it, that I wonder if I didn’t make some mistake in asking for it, possibly saying April 1st instead of May 1–st In any case, thank you for your promptness. I drew $500 yesterday on the old letter, and still have $750 th to my credit on it, which I will draw, probably, about April 15– & which will go in part towards paying Cory’s travelling expenses back to England and possibly to the U.S. as his father1 has offered him the free use of his apartment in New York and we think it might be a good thing for him to look about among the Columbia people—he has many friends there—and perhaps find a permanent literary job. My own plans are somewhat in suspense, as there seems to be a possibility of war this summer. If it should really become very thick, neither Cortina nor Paris would be a suitable place for an aged non-combatant: ^^ I might try Fiuggi, in the Apennines not far from here, which is recommended by many people, and would be safe. I suppose you too may hesitate to come to Europe this season, if the political sky doesn’t decidedly clear. I agree with those who say that a fresh war would be only a resumption of hostilities, the old war not having really been brought to a true end. There was no one in authority who had the least elevation of mind— I mean capacity to take long clear views of the forces at work. Now there is one man whom I should trust to make a fair settlement. He made one not long ago with the Pope2—something which every other politician thought impossible. It hasn’t abolished differences of opinion or theoret-
5:182
The Letters of George Santayana
ical programme, but it has been a practical settlement which nobody would desire to upset. That is all anyone can ask for in this world. ^ ^ Now that the pound is below par, you might, when convenient, transfer another [across ] thousand dollars to my London bank account, which is getting low. Yours affly G.S. 1
David Cory, Daniel’s father, was a stockbroker who turned to writing the syndicated Jack Rabbit stories for children. 2 Mussolini negotiated an agreement with Pope Pius XI regarding monetary compensation to the Church for papal territories which had been appropriated by the Italian government during the unification of Italy. Previously, the Church had refused even to recognize the Italian government. The signing of the treaty occurred on 11 February 1929.
To Louis Alexander Freedman 1 April 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, April 1–st 1935 Dear Mr. Freedman1 The impulse to publish books of “poetry” is like the impulse to marry: one’s best friends dare not say a word against it. It might turn out well: in any case, warnings will be wasted. I will therefore confine my reply to the point that concerns me; and I am sorry to say that, even if your verses were of the latest aesthetic calibre, I shouldn’t venture to write a preface to them. I am not in the swim; you had better ask Mr. Ezra Pound, if you think you need some one else’s name as a talisman to open the gates of fame, or at least of a publishing house. I was naturally interested in your soliloquy of the Tore/ o-bravo; but isn’t he too observant of the spectacle? And I expected him to kill the matador, rather than become immortal in his own person.2 Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Louis Alexander Freedman (b. 1873), a member of Harvard’s class of 1896, wrote Roses Green, Roses Black: Verse Rimed, Verse Unrimed, Rhythmic Prose (Putnam’s, 1935) and Simple Insanities: Reflection in Rime (Putnam’s, 1936). 2 Among the nine poems Freedman sent Santayana was “The Cry of the Bull from Beyond: What Have I Done to Them?”
1933–1936
To Otto Kyllmann 7 April 1935 • Rome, Italy
5:183
(MS: Temple) Hotel Bristol, Rome April 7, 1935
Dear Mr. Kyllmann At last yesterday I sent off the MS of The Last Puritan which I hope you will receive safely. Perhaps, if you have an Easter holiday, you may be able to read it at your leisure, instead of during the Christmas holidays, when you kindly intended to do so. We have tried to polish it and make it as inoffensive as possible, without weakening the picturesque or the moral burden of it: but it has to be “burdened”; “burdened” was a favourite word with my old teacher Josiah Royce at Harvard:1 it signified all the inescapable oppression, nervous and imaginative, from which he and his people suffered. Cory thinks that the last part of the book is “inevitable”, and has dramatic interest. I see myself that it reads more like other novels than does the body of the story, but I haven’t attempted to practice “the art of fiction” according to Percy Lubbock or any other critic,2 but to write a documentary biography of an imaginary superior American, as it might be if distilled into its quintessence and expressed with complete frankness. I shall be in no hurry to know your verdict upon it: take as long as you like to formulate your impression, and to decide whether —the it book ^ ^ ought to be published now, or had better be postponed. But I should be much obliged if you would send me a postcard saying the MS has reached you. I am not anxious about it, as in the case of books of mine that hadn’t been type-written. In this case I have two other copies, so that even an accident happening wouldn’t have serious consequences. I am doing nothing about the American edition until I hear what you think would be best. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Josiah Royce (1855–1916), an English instructor at Berkeley (1878–82) and philosophy professor at Harvard (1882–1916), directed Santayana’s dissertation. Influenced by the German idealists, Royce held that the world exists only insofar as beings with minds know it, and the finite self knows truth only because the individual mind is part of the world-mind. His works include The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1892), The World and the Individual (1900–1901), and The Philosophy of Loyalty (1908).
5:184
The Letters of George Santayana
2 Percy Lubbock (1879–1965), essayist, critic and author of The Craft of Fiction (Scribner’s, 1921), edited the works and letters of Henry James. Lubbock married Lady Sybil Marjorie Cuffe Cutting (1879–1943), the widow of Santayana’s old friend William Bayard Cutting Jr.
To Otto Kyllmann 8 April 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Temple) Hotel Bristol, Rome April 8th 1935
Dear Mr. Kyllmann I find in my desk the enclosed page, which I fear had dropped out of the First Part of The Last Puritan, in packing the manuscript. I am sorry to give you the trouble of inserting it at p. 70. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz 11 April 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London S.W.1 Rome, April 11, 1935
Dear Mr. Buchler and Mr. Schwartz Here is the preface to Obiter Scripta. If you have no better publisher in mind, or if none is found willing in New York, it occurs to me that you might try Constable & Company in London (10 & 12, Orange Street, W.C.2). Mr. O. Kyllmann, who I believe is the senior partner, has always been very considerate and appreciative towards my work, and he might be willing to undertake this book without great hopes of profit, as completing my works already published by his firm. Especially if we agreed, as I suggested, to insure the publishers against actual loss. Mr. Kyllmann now has the manuscript of my “novel” in hand; he hasn’t yet read it, or got opinions on it from his readers, but he is well disposed. Yours sincerely GSantayana
1933–1936
To Otto Kyllmann 11 April 1935 • Rome, Italy
5:185
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Bristol, Rome April 11, 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann I don’t gather from your telegram your reason for desiring a second copy of The Last Puritan. Is the first damaged or inconvenient? Or do you wish merely to save time by letting two readers inspect it at once? You know I am in no hurry; and I couldn’t send you the other type-written copy without having none left to send eventually to America: the original manuscript not being corrected. It would be an immense labour to transfer all the corrections and additions to the original version, and besides would deprive it of whatever interest it might have as a curiosity. If a second copy is important from your point of view, I would rather that you should have one made in London, charging the expense to my account. Yours sincerely GSantayana P.S. Thank you very much for your note of the 9–th received as I was closing this letter.
To Boylston Adams Beal 20 April 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton) Hotel Bristol, Rome April 20, 1935
Dear Boylston Your telegram has given me more pleasure than I can say. It was most kind of you, and of Gordon Bell and Jack Morgan, to remember me, and to wish to have me join you in those festivities.1 I should gladly go to the ends of the earth if I could find everything as it used to be fifty years ago, or even simply the members of the Drunk’s Exercice Club.2 But not everybody will be there, even under the (somewhat false) mask of old age. You know how maudlin we all become now, even without drink; and — ev apart from the journey, which I can’t undertake, I should rather dread this dinner, not to speak of all the other encounters which a visit to America
5:186
The Letters of George Santayana
would involve. I don’t know whether it is indifference or excess of sentiment or a mixture of both, but I can’t bring myself to face these emotional th occasions. Next year, with the Harvard Tercentenary and the 50– anniversary of our class, it might seem impossible to resist the impulse to celebrate, but I am not going. Much better that you should come quietly to Rome; and we can indulge in a judicious amount of reminiscence and lamentation, without giving ourselves away. I am afraid, however, that by that time I shall have given myself away altogether in my novel, which Constable has just accepted for publication, in the most flattering terms, and which, I suppose, will also appear in America within a year. I will send a copy (as usual) to the club. It is an old man’s book about young men, and I hope the young men will like it. Perhaps not, because they can’t yet see themselves in perspective. At the dinner, or elsewhere, please tell Ward Thoron3 that I often remember him too. I think I never saw him at the club, but it was earlier, especially during his first year at Harvard, (at 9 Linden Street, as it happened) that we read War & Peace together,4 and compared notes on life. Yours ever G.S. 1
Gordon Knox Bell was a member of Harvard’s class of 1893. Multimillionaire John “Jack” Pierpont Morgan Jr. (1867–1943), a member of the class of 1889, had, like Santayana, belonged to the Delta Phi Club at Harvard. 2 This was a group within the Delta Phi Club at Harvard in the early 1890s who took a walk and went to vespers every afternoon. 3 Ward Thoron (c. 1866–1938) was another member of the Harvard class of 1886 and Santayana’s closest friend during his undergraduate years. See Persons, 221–24. A business executive for nearly fifty years, he retired in 1932 and turned to literary work, including editing The Letters of Mrs. Henry Adams (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1936). 4 They read Tolstoy’s War and Peace in French during Thoron’s convalescence from an illness (Persons, 223).
To Otto Kyllmann 20 April 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Bristol, Rome April 20, 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann Need I say that it is the greatest possible satisfaction for me to know that you think well of The Last Puritan? Thank you for the extremely kind terms in which you express your judgement.
1933–1936
5:187
I am sorry there was this confusion about the pages. It arose from the fact that we transposed what was originally Chapter I, to the end of Part I; and in making the necessary adjustments, in two copies, I seem to have got things a little mixed. It will be easy to straighten the matter out. The terms on which you propose to publish the book are entirely satisfactory, and generous. You know that luckily I don’t depend on my present earnings for bread and butter; but I hope the venture may prove reasonably profitable for both of us. As to publication in America, I have promised to let Scribner have the book. Mr. J. H. Wheelock in particular has expressed his interest in it, evidently hoping that it might sell better than my other books. For this very reason, to obtain the American copyright, I understand that it will be necessary to reprint this book in the U.S., as was done in the case of my “Poems.” You will therefore not be directly concerned with the American ^ ^ edition; and I can send Scribner’s my other typescript copy, or the extra copy of your proofs, when I receive them. If you approve, I should rather do the latter, because I trust your taste in type, printing, etc., and if they have your proof they will be likely to reproduce it as nearly as possible in their reprint. I also wished to avoid any precipitancy on their part in issuing their edition before yours was ready. In this way you can arrange for simultaneous publication or not, as you think best. You say nothing about possible objections to my use of names of persons and places, like Iffley Church, Sandford and the King’s Arms there, and at Oxford. Of course the persons & events are wholly fictitious, but there might be coincidences suggesting malice entirely absent on my part. [across ] Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Otto Kyllmann 28 April 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Bristol, Rome April 28, 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann Here is the one of the alternative pages which I should like you to use. I am sorry there was this confusion, and that I caused your printers so much unnecessary trouble.
5:188
The Letters of George Santayana
The specimen pages are excellent, and although the book is so long, I see that it won’t have a forbidding aspect. It already begins to seem strange that I should have been the author of it. You are so quick about making these arrangements that I may as well ask you at once not to include the MS when you send me the proofs, but to despatch these in an open packet, like ordinary printed matter. This will prevent trouble with custom-houses and foreign post-offices. I expect to remain here, at the Hotel Bristol, Rome, until the end of May, and then shall probably go for the summer to the Hotel Miramonti, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. I will let you know if I should not follow this plan, and in any case, C/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, S.W.1 is a safe address. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Max Forrester Eastman 30 April 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Indiana)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, April 30, 1935
Dear Mr. Eastman1 Although books on “aesthetics” are not nowadays the sort of straw that I like to find in my manger, I have devoured your little book2 almost at one sitting, and found it, I won’t say the best of oats, but a most palatable and fresh and digestible kind of hay. You will not be surprised that I agree with your main contention, about the supremacy of free contemplation, not only in what is called “art” but in all perception, imagination, and dramatic experience. That human religions, crafts, and sciences were once suffused with this ultimate immediate value, and are now ceasing to be so, is [illegible ]very true: but do you think it follows that all arts must achieve the condition of pure music? I should say that absolute values, and emotions native to the perception of form, must always intervene in all human activities; and the question is only how much attention is arrested or delayed by this medium. There will always be music, or the contrary of music, in speech and writing: and even mathematical physics, when translated into words and views about the course of nature (for instance, in
1933–1936
5:189
astronomy) at once acquires pictorial and dramatic qualities. Of course, people altogether immersed in business or pedantry always have been and always will be boors: but that doesn’t prevent the poetry or comedy of life from being evident to those who have eyes to see it. I was naturally particularly interested in your views about bull-fighting, and incidentally o/in Hemingway’s (whose books I haven’t read).3 Yes: your example about the lion who had no Christian hits the nail on the head: we Spaniards have narrowly canalized passionate sympathies, and the bull gets little consideration, except, as you say, for his fighting courage or nobleza.4 We don’t suffer much at the sufferings of animals, Chinamen, heretics, or (if we are liberals) of priests, nuns, or pious old ladies. We are horrified at a murder, and the next day melt into compassion for the murderer. It is all very heady and irrational; although I am not sure how far the Buddhistic and modern tenderness for brute life may not be a romantic illusion. With many thanks; yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Max Forrester Eastman (1883–1969), an American critic, poet, and essayist, taught philosophy and psychology at Columbia University. Initially occupied with aesthetics, he then turned to political and social controversy. He helped found the magazines The Masses and The Liberator. His works include Enjoyment of Poetry (1913) and his autobiography, Enjoyment of Living (1948). 2 Art and the Life of Action (London: Allen & Unwin, 1935). 3 Death in the Afternoon (New York: Scribner’s and Sons, 1932) is a nonfiction eulogy of bullfighting. 4 Nobility (Italian).
To David Page 3 May 1935 • Rome, Italy C
(MS postcard: Columbia)
/o Brown Shipley & C–o 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, May 3, 1935 I am glad to see symptoms of “a certain liveliness” in intellectual Boston, but I don’t quite gather what your Anathema anathematizes.1 You speak of “Beauty”, and also of the danger of going mad; and the poetry of your first number gives more evidence of the latter than of the former. No: I am sorry I can’t contribute; but I have no doubt that the rebelliousness in your young circle will help to destroy such shams, as may still
5:190
The Letters of George Santayana
prevail in your world. The great desideratum, however, is something sound to take their place. GSantayana 1 David Page edited Anathema, a quarterly publication of the Monarchist Party, which became the Monarchist Quarterly in 1936.
To George Sturgis 8 May 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton) Hotel Bristol, Rome May 8, 1935
Dear George My plans are still somewhat uncertain, but probably I shall go straight to Cortina about June 1–st The war-rumours seem to have died down, and perhaps it is reasonable to believe the Germans will not attack anybody until there is a good prospect of doing so with safety. Events in Austria or Russia or Poland, however, might at any moment precipitate a conflict; only that things will be so mixed that even if the armies held out (which is doubtful) the governments themselves would hardly have the constancy which they showed—most of them—in 1914–18. Anyhow, I am acting as if all would remain normal; and probably we should have timely warning before the Germans could get at us in Italy. Cory has gone back to England, and the novel is being printed by Constable, who seems to have been favourably impressed by it. I am going to send the proofs, when they arrive, to New York, so that Scribner may reprint the book there, and secure the American copyright. President Conant of Harvard, and the Tercentenary committee, have been writing to me in a somewhat queer way. First they asked me to come to Commencement this year, and get a degree of Doctor of Letters. (I mean, Lit.D. not Ll.D.). When I declined this honour, which I got 24 years ago from the U. of Wisconsin, they wrote asking me to come next year, read an essay at the Summer School, and get a degree, not Specified, together with 60 other distinguished Scholars—no politicians or even Presidents of Colleges being in the list. I have a feeling that they wanted to get me out of the way as inconspicuously as possible, without actually overlooking me altogether. But in any case, I should have declined, partly because I don’t want to go to America at all, much less to an academic
1933–1936
5:191
congress, and partly because when my novel comes out there may be more or less offence taken at it, and it is better that nobody should be placed in the embarrassing position of countenancing naughtiness. All novels are naughtier now than they used to be: but how shocking that an ex-professor of philosophy at Harvard should write a novel at all, and call a spade a spade! At least, they won’t be seeing me, and finding they have unwittingly given me an honorary degree—almost of Divinity—at the very moment when I was unmasking my essential wickedness. With 3000 miles of salt water between us, I shall feel safer and less hypocritical. I am afraid I sha’n’t see you this time: but let me know if you really feel like flying to Venice about June 1–st and I [across ] could stop there for a day or two on the way to Cortina. Yours affly G.S.
To John Hall Wheelock 9 May 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, May 9, 1935 Dear Mr. Wheelock Today I am sending you a copy of the type-written manuscript of The Last Puritan. I had some thought of waiting until I had a proof of the English edition, which would have been easier to send and to read: Constable has already accepted the book, and I enclose a specimen of the page they have adopted, — and which seems to me excellent. But on second thoughts, it seemed better to send you the typescript at once, so that if you accept the book, you may be able to publish it simultaneously with the London edition, without obliging them to delay their issue. I am far from confident of the reception this book will have: some people may be offended, or may disapprove on principle: but the times described are already somewhat distance —t, and I don’t care very much myself for ^the^ opinion of the public, if a few friends are found—as I am sure they will be— to enjoy the spirit of the thing with me. Mr. Kyllmann, of Constable & Co–, seems to be favourably impressed, but he is always partial to my work, and I am not sure what my American friends—most of them—will think. Yours sincerely GSantayana
5:192
The Letters of George Santayana
To Otto Kyllmann 13 May 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Temple)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, May 13, 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann I am sending the Rev. Mr. Heimsath’s1 request about quoting from one of my sonnets to Scribner in New York. On second thoughts, I have also sent them the other typescript copy of The Last Puritan instead of waiting for the proof to come from your printers. You have been so expeditious that I think now there is no danger of the American edition being issued first; on the contrary, they might wish to delay your publication if it were thought better that the two should be simultaneous. I don’t remember clearly what was done in the case of my Poems, but two years ago, when they reprinted my Five Essays,2 they delayed many months after the Cam. Univ. Press had issued the English edition. I included the specimen pages from your printer, saying I liked them, so that they may see the form that the English edition is expected to take. Thank you for the signed Agreement about The Last Puritan, which has arrived today. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Probably Charles Herman Heimsath (1894–1980), who wrote With Honor (Harper & Brothers, 1935), among other books. 2 Turns.
To Pauline Holmes 16 May 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, May 16, 1935 Dear Miss Holmes I am very much pleased, and a little surprised, that my letter about the Latin School should have been publicly read and printed so beautifully in
1933–1936
5:193
Anniversary Programme, and that now you should wish to include it in your book.1 I am overwhelmed, and happy if I can contribute anything to your good work. The whole para/ ody of the Aeneid in the Register of 1881–2 was my effusion; also the Sonnet on Garfield’s death (my first Sonnet, I believe) and the “Short History of the Class of ’82.” I wonder if you have ever heard of the scandal that accompanied our removal from Bedford Street? My class had formed a sort of debating Society that met once a week, in the evening, in a rather desolate room, I think in Tremont or Upper Boylston Street (where the Drill Hall was); I read one evening to the boys a copy of verses, which they acclaimed and wished to have printed, and naturally my virgin Muse could only blush and consent. I enclose a copy, for your collection of Latin School antiquities.2 You needn’t return it: I have another. But the scandal began when at our last public declamation in the old School, Mr. Merrill (“Holy Moses”)3 got wind that one of the boys had written a poem on the occasion; would he please step up to the stage and read it. I stepped up, and with the presence of mind of a future philosophy, — er, read only the first part, and sat down again. But there were copies of the thing about; the public got hold of them; and you may imagine the effect when the masters read the lines dedicated to their respective persons. However, with explanations and due apologies, I was forgiven. I am sending for your book and expect to read it with great pleasure. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Pauline Holmes’s book A Tercentenary History of the Boston Public Latin School, 1635–1935 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935) includes Santayana’s “The Æneid.” 2 Unlocated. 3 Moses Merrill (1833–1902) was headmaster of the Boston Public Latin School in 1880.
5:194
The Letters of George Santayana
To William Lyon Phelps 18 May 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS postcard: Beinecke)
Rome, May 18, 1935 Sorry to miss you both, but am anchored here for a fortnight longer, when I sail for Cortina d’Ampezzo. Hope you will find Paris as pleasant as ever: probably it is, but I miss the Duvals1 and other joys of student days. G. S. ROMA–PALAZZO LATERANENSE 1
A chain of inexpensive restaurants in Paris.
To Otto Kyllmann 20 May 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Temple)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, S.W.1 Rome, May 20, 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann th I hardly know what to say in answer to your letter of May 16– but I am sending you two copies of a sort of autobiography which you may not have seen.1 The first pages explain who I am. You might find data in them for your notices; at least they will help people not to go wrong about my parentage, relation to Boston & Harvard, etc. As to The Last Puritan I think I wrote you a long letter some years ago in which I said something—probably fresher than what I should say now— about the origin of the book.2 It was begun 45 years ago, and at first intended to be a story of college life—good boy & bad boy who are friends—like Sandford & Merton, or (rather better) like Keddy.3 But the greater part of that became uninteresting to me as I grew older, and the absence of any possible plot, unless serious love-affairs were introduced, ^ ^ which were not in the original plan, made me neglect the thing for many years. The war suggested a way of winding the story up; and as I spent those five years at Oxford, it also gave me a certain familiarity with the setting for the English scenes. In my own mind the theme is the sentimental education, or disillusionment, of a superior young American: which involves a criticism of
1933–1936
5:195
modern conventions, as well as a counter-criticism of any high-strung individual morality: the tragedy of which makes this Puritan the last puritan. The rest is, for me, merely quiet fun. I don’t know w/ how far the mingling, almost the identity, of satire and elevation of feeling (a very Spanish mixture) will appeal to English taste. I don’t know whether these hints may not suggest to you something [across ] to say in your own words; you have read the book and know the sort of thing required. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
“A Brief History of My Opinions.” Letter of 1 December 1928. 3 Thomas Day wrote the three-volume History of Sandford and Merton: A Work Intended for the Use of Children (London: J. Stockdale, 1783–89). Keddy, A Story of Oxford was written by H. N. Dickinson (London: W. Heinemann, 1907). 2
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 28 May 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Rome, May 28th 1935 Dear Cory I am leaving this evening for Venice, on the way to Cortina, and with the little worries of packing and shopping I haven’t had a very clear mind for appreciating your article.1 I have read it in scraps, and must wait for a more peaceful moment for getting a fair general impression. Of course I agree with your position, I think in every case: although, at first I felt some doubts about the beginning and the quotation from Locke, as if both of you regarded the originality of mind and the human scale of sensuous images as required for the mechanical adjustment and utility of these images and minds in the midst of action. That needs clearing up: consider dreams, poetry, the syntax of language. Mind everywhere is only an illustration to the running text; it is not useful images that are created (how should they have been known to be useful, or even apposite, before they were thought of?) but useful summary reactions or affections of the organism — that create images, like smells, vaguely reporting to consciousness the turn of affairs and apposite because they occur then . However, this ques^ ^ tion of the epiphenomenal level and poetic function of all mind, doesn’t come within your direct subject, and it is only my own preoccupation
5:196
The Letters of George Santayana
with it that raises it inopportunely, like a ghost in the daytime. What you and Locke say is perfectly true, taken as it is meant ∴ it would be a waste of energy, for instance, if we had to distinguish all the electrons and give them separate names, as astronomers do to the stars. As to your manner I felt in places that you were lecturing, not writing. Your style is not sedentary enough: you are ogling the ladies in the front row; you are preoccupied with yourself and not always (in spite of many strong passages) lost in your subject. In other words, I think this article is still a sort of rehearsal, and that it had better be melted down before the substance is moulded into a book. I had sent the other type-written copy of The Last Puritan to Scribners, thinking that Constable now had a sufficient start, and that they might get to work in New York also: now I receive the enclosed telegram.2 Apparently the coast is clear on both sides of the Atlantic. I send you your cheque as usual for the first of the month, although it isn’t quite thirty days since you got the last: but it’s the London season and you may need clothes. Yours affy G.S. [across] P.S. Better address C/o B. S. & C–o until you hear that I have settled at Cortina for the summer. 1 Cory had sent Santayana an advanced copy of an essay that was published in June (Years, 152). 2 Unlocated.
To Boylston Adams Beal 30 May 1935 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Houghton) May 30th 1935
Dear Boylston, Your letter tells me exactly what I should have seen and felt if I had gone to the anniversary of the Club and makes me glad that I wasn’t there. Not indifference, mind you; the opposite. The new edition of the Club catalogue also takes me back, and brings me forward, to the old times and towards the present; but we can’t see these things in their true colours; there is always a little falsification, partly sentiment and partly just helplessness to see things as they were or as they are. What Gordon Bell says in the History about us, and in particular HOTEL ROYAL DANIELI, VENEZIA
1933–1936
5:197
about me, is all true enough, and sympathetically meant; but it misses the atmosphere of the ’90’s, or early ’90’s, when the Philistine mind had freshly discovered sport, art, literature, and religion, and was respectfully, but humorously, in love with them. Bob & Warwick Potter,1 you and I, were just that: dilettanti2 really delighting in the nice side of things: and the distance—the American and Protestant perspective inevitable for most of us—made the experience romantic and a little tragic at bottom. Probably the young men of today are better adapted to the age. Those I come across seem to me all alike, and rather uninteresting, unless they are caught in the political revolution. That is the living question now, not our questions, when we thought the material arrangements of the world had all become final and satisfactory, and there was time for thinking of higher things. Now there isn’t time or inclination or much sense of higher things to think about. But there is the great social army to lead and to keep in order. It is what the old Romans had to do. I am on the way to Cortina for the Summer, and hope next winter to return to Rome and to see you there. Yours ever G.S. 1
Robert Burnside “Bob” Potter (1869–1934) graduated from Harvard in 1891 and from the École des Beaux Arts in 1900. He was an architect in New York and devoted much time to astronomy. Warwick Potter (1870–93), a close friend and a student of Santayana’s, was a member of the class of 1893. Warwick died unexpectedly of cholera in the autumn of that same year. He served as inspiration for some of Santayana’s poems and his death is elegized in Santayana’s four sonnets “To W. P.” 2 Amateurs (Italian)
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 7 June 1935 • Venice, Italy
(MS postcard: Columbia)
June 7, ’35 A man in Birmingham named Philip Lane1 wishes to translate the Realms of Being into French. I have given him your address.—The proofs of the novel have arrived. A whole page has been left out in the Prologue—I hope not lost. Otherwise the proof is carefully revised.—Expect to stay here until June 17, then go to the Hotel Savoy, Cortina. G.S. VENEZIA 1
PIAZZA SAN MARCO E CAMPANILE.
Unidentified. No French translation has been located.
5:198
The Letters of George Santayana
To Otto Kyllmann 7 June 1935 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Temple)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123., Pall Mall, S.W.1 Venice, June 7, 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann The two proof copies of The Last Puritan have reached me here; I was surprised to see them already sewed and made into a compact volume. The text in general seems to be very accurate; I will send the return-proof back in a few days, when I have had time to go over it attentively. But I ev have discovered at once on p. 8 of the Prologue that a whole page, — probably p. 3/ 5 of the M.S., has dropped out. I can’t think how the proof reader didn’t perceive it, since the thing as it stands doesn’t make sense, begins suddenly on a different subject, and with “ture”, which isn’t an English word, but the end of the missing passage. I enclose the page, so that you may see how the matter stands, and call the printer’s attention to it. I hope they have the missing page; because, having started on my summer trip, I haven’t the original manuscript with me. It is packed up with my books in Rome. I hope the copy they have in New York (Scribner has acknowledged the receipt of it by cable, saying he is “enthusiastic”) is complete. Otherwise, I suppose I could somehow patch up the passage; I have an imperfect memory of it, and the break might remain evident to a sensitive reader if I tried to rewrite it now. Don’t be alarmed at seeing this page cut off and loose: I haven’t touched the sewed volume to be sent back; but I have cut up the other, as I often do French books, into fascicules1 which are easy to carry about in one’s pocket. I don’t need this pages/, as I have already transferred the indication necessary to the other proof, for the printer’s guidance. But I thought this had better be known to you at once. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Sections (French).
1933–1936
To George Sturgis 7 June 1935 • Venice, Italy
5:199
(MS: Houghton) June 7, 1935
Dear George It is most provoking that we should have been in Venice for four days without seeing each other. My memory for things that happen from day to day is getting vague, but I thought I th had told you in time that I was coming to Venice on May 28– , the only question open being whether I should proceed at once to Cortina, or later. The cool rainy weather here, and the unsatisfactory arrangements proposed by the manager of the Miramonti, made me decide to stay here, th and I wired on the 30– , feeling sure that you would receive my message th – before the 4 of June, when you expected me to reach Cortina. I little thought that you were at Venice already, but hoped you would come. It is always a fascinating place, and I am glad that you enjoyed it, in spite of the rather unsuitable weather. Now it has become summer-like, but quieter, the French fleet having departed. I have made arrangements with another hotel in Cortina, the Savoy, in th the village, and expect to go there, on June 17– when the motor bus will be running. I hope the rest of your trip will be pleasant, as well as your voyage home As to the novel, the proofs arrived yesterday from London, already sewed up into a book. Scribner in New York has received another copy of the manuscript (type-written, of course) and telegraphed saying they were “enthusiastic”, but I don’t know when the publication will take place in either country, probably not till the autumn.1 No: I am not going to America next year. I understand the feeling of, “Oh, you must come”, and can share it; but it is a drunken sort of cordiality, and really all those meetings and forced [across ] jollifications would be ghastly. But why do you always speak of Bob Barlow as “Mr.”? Dont you know he is your cousin?2 [across text ] Yours affly G.S. HOTEL ROYAL DANIELI VENEZIA
1
Puritan was published in London by Constable on 17 October 1935 and in New York by Scribner’s on 1 February 1936. 2 Robert Shaw Barlow was the grandson of Mrs. Francis George Shaw (“Aunt Sarah”). Aunt Sarah was the sister of George Sturgis of Manila, Santayana’s mother’s first husband and grandfather of the recipient of this letter.
5:200
The Letters of George Santayana
To John Hall Wheelock 9 June 1935 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Venice, June 9, 1935 Dear Mr. Wheelock It is a great satisfaction to hear that The Last Puritan recommends itself to you. One of my friends—himself rather a puritan—who saw a part of it, thought it ought to be burned;1 and I am still afraid that some sides of it may give offence in certain quarters. However, you are a better judge of that than I; and in any case, a small scandal, if it arose, might help the book to retain people’s attention. I think this—to ra/etain people’s attention—is more important and more appropriate in the case of my books than either a large immediate sale or unmixed approval. I have never expected everybody to sympathise or to buy. I am satisfied if a few people continue to do both. As to the form and price of the American edition, my feeling—which it is very kind of you to take into consideration—inclines towards one volume rather than two and to the lowest possible cost. I am very glad you think it possible to offer so long a book for $2.50; and ten percent for my royalty will amply satisfy me. If I am not wrong, you have spontaneously increased my royalty in books that still S/ sell after a good many years, and Constable & Co, in their contract for The Last Puritan have offered me twenty-percent for any sales exceeding 5000. If this book should have any such success—and it is just possible—perhaps it would be fair that you should make a similar concession; but it is not a matter of importance to me personally; I sha’n’t be alive to profit by it, and have no heirs. Another small matter regarding the contract is that Constable & C –o have arranged for a Canadian edition,2 and wish me to make sure than your contract shall cover only the copyright for the United States. I am now engaged in reading the proofs, which is rather a task; but the volume, already sewed and compact, has an encouraging aspect. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
C. A. Strong. Macmillan published Puritan in Toronto in 1935.
2
1933–1936
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 9 June 1935 • Venice, Italy
5:201
(MS: Unknown) Venice, June 9, ’35
Dear Cory You may be interested in seeing this letter,1 and contrasting it with Mr. Kyllmann’s. I have replied, advocating one volume at the cheapest possible price—isn’t $2.50 nowadays very little for so long a book?—and declaring myself satisfied with ten per cent. But I have added that Constable was promising me 20% for any sales above 5000; suggesting that they might do the same; and adding that the contract must cover the U.S. only, as Constable is making arrangements for a Canadian edition. Et voilà.2 G.S. 1
In his 28 May 1935 letter to Santayana, Wheelock wrote that successful sale of Puritan depended upon a single-volume format selling for $2.50 per copy. That could be accomplished by limiting Santayana’s royalty to ten percent. A fifteen-percent royalty would increase the price to $3 or $3.50, in which case a two-volume edition would appeal more to readers willing to pay that. 2 And there you have it (French).
To Sterling Power Lamprecht 13 June 1935 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Dartmouth)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Venice, June 13, 1935 Dear Mr. Lamprecht You would be doing me a positive benefit if you had my Hague lecture printed and could let me have half a dozen copies. Ten off-prints which the editors allowed me proved inadequate, and (as you say) the whole Septimana Spinozana is an impossible medium. It is true that this lecture is to be included in a volume edited by Mr. Buchler and Mr. Schwartz of the Butler Library at Columbia, a collection of stray things of mine to be called Obiter Scripta; but they can’t find a publisher and we don’t know
5:202
The Letters of George Santayana
when, if ever, the book will appear. So that your project, at least for the present, would fill a gap. There is no copyright for this lecture, and you will have no business formalities of any sort to go through, except to pay your printer It is very interesting to know that you have gone over my various effusions on religion and found them consistent yet progressive. As far as I know, in this as in other matters, my views have not changed, once they were formed: but of course the sort of interest and the tone must have varied with age, and with the general background. My attention of late has been turned again to the subject, and I have been reading a lot of books about the origin of Christianity: if ever I got round to composing anything on that theme, it would be to reinforce my old contention about poetry in religion: Christianity (including the Four Gospels) is a product of inspiration. There is also a lot about religion in my “novel”, The Last Puritan, which will probably appear in the autumn: but nothing new for the purposes of you course, which I wish I could attend Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Otto Kyllmann 18 June 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Savoy, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy June 18, 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann In regard to the missing page in The Last Puritan, it seems that I shall have to rewrite the passage. But ill luck seems to pursue us, for now I haven’t the text of that part at all, since I have sent you both the proofs I had of it, one in the entire copy, and the other in a loose sheet. I remember how the phrase breaks off, and can continue after a fashion from there; but I must connect with the other loose end, which I have forgotten. Could you have another copy of the proof—at least pp. 7 and 8,—sent to me at once? This troublesome accident may have its good side, because I can perhaps shorten the Prologue a little, and make the relevance of that passage clearer. It was a very early passage, written when the centre of gravity of the story was in another place.
1933–1936
5:203
I will set myself at once to compose something, and send it to you as soon as I have the context before me, into which it must fit. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To John Hall Wheelock 18 June 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co, 123 Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Cortina, June 18, 1935 Dear Mr. Wheelock If the enclosed is to be taken seriously, will you please answer it for me in any sense that you think fitting?1 A page, probably p. 5, of the Constable manuscript of /t The Last ^ ^ Puritan has somehow disappeared, and the first proof came to me a week ago with a complete break in sense and subject in the middle of what appeared to be a single sentence. I am going to attempt patching the thing up as well as I can from memory, but I am rather afraid the sod/ldering will show. Could you, since you are not going to use the type-script copy I sent you,2 let me have the first three or four pages of the Prologue back, or a copy of them? The missing page must begin with the word “gentlemen” and end with the first part of a word terminating in “ture.” I think it must be the third page of the Prologue and numbered 5 in blue pencil. I am sorry that my irregular and non-professional mode of life should cause so much trouble. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
This may have been Richard Halliday’s 4 June 1935 letter to Santayana. Halliday worked for Paramount Pictures Distributing Corporation and had asked if there were an agent handling the motion-picture rights to Puritan. He wanted to see a carbon copy of the manuscript or galley proof of the novel. To date no movie of Puritan has been made. 2 The 1936 Scribner’s edition of Puritan was set from sheets of the 1935 Constable edition. For discussion of the composition and publication, see the Textual Commentary to the Critical Edition of Puritan (1994).
5:204
The Letters of George Santayana
To Otto Kyllmann 21 June 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Savoia Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, June 21, 1935 Dear Mr Kyllmann th In regard to /t The Last Puritan, I see by your note of the 18– that the missing passage in the Prologue covers two pages, instead of one, as I had supposed. This will make it necessary, in any case, to shorten the original text, if we are not to disarrange the paging of the whole book. I will see that the part supplied does not exceed in length the page and a half that are available at the end of the Prologue. As I explained in my last letter, I need a proof of the page where the break occurs, in order to fit the new paragraphs into it. How much does time press in your plans for this publication? If you were not in a hurry, I could wait till I receive the missing portions from Scribner, to whom I wrote some days ago, asking for a copy of them. It would be easier for me merely to shorten and adjust the old text than to compose it quite afresh, especially as my head is now full of other matters. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Charles Augustus Strong 21 June 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Savoia Cortina d’Ampezzo June 21, 1935 Dear Strong As you may notice by the heading above, I am not at the Miramonti this year but at the Savoia, in the village. I wasn’t pleased with the room or the price which they offered me at the Miramonti, felt that they were not treating such a habitual client with due consideration, and also thought that it might be pleasanter for me, in my walks, to start from the
1933–1936
5:205
town, and not always have to do the same round in getting back to a point at one extreme end of the valley. I find this hotel very quiet and pleasant, have a larger room, a bathroom with a window. It isn’t cheaper, or not much cheaper, but I think I shall be comfortable for the summer and able to work. I read the first proof of the novel at Venice, where I stopped for three weeks. There are 721 pages, already sewed up into a volume. But two pages in the Prologue had disappeared—lost, I expect, by Mr. Kyllmann oof MS , which was the carbon copy on very thin paper, in reading the — pr— ^ ^ and we are having some trouble in filling the gap. I am now working on the Realm of Spirit, contrary to plan, because I felt more alive on that subject just now than on Truth or Dominations and Powers: but I have the MS of both these other books with me, in case the wind should change. I am glad to know where you are, and that your expedition and cure have proved satisfactory. Less smiling, I am afraid, is the prospect of the Piazza della Signoria in July or August. There isn’t any likelihood that Cory will soon go to New York, either invited or uninvited. The occasion has passed; and I suspect the partly secret motives that finally drew him to England will continue to keep him there. Yours as ever G.S.
To Otto Kyllmann 23 June 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Savoy Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy June 23, 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann On receiving the proof I asked for, of the Prologue to The Last Puritan, I felt that I could patch the thing up at once, and I send you a passage that I think will fit in well enough. It omits one theme touched upon in the original version, but perhaps that is an advantage in that it makes the Prologue a bit shorter and less complex. I have taken special pains to arrange the paragraphs so that the type, as at present set, need not be disturbed at all, but only [illegible ]pushed
5:206
The Letters of George Santayana
forward. The Prologue will run over a bit into the blank page 16, without affecting the rest of the text. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 26 June 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Savoy Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy June 26, 1935 Dear Cory Michael is all very well, and I am glad you are absorb ed in the ^ ^ work.1 With your intensity, I am sure it will have impressive episodes. But what will Strong think? Incest? Your own mother? And not always the right word, as Rochester, N.Y. would employ it. Remember to say “purchase” and not “buy” “attend” and not “go to”; it takes away from the commonness of common things, and makes even the calls of nature seem moral & genteel. In Venice I got—I mean, I purchased—a Tauchnitz edition of Point Counter Point2 and have been carrying loose sheafs of it in my pocket ever since, to read in cafés etc. I haven’t yet finished it, but although it is interesting as a caricature of modern types, I don’t think it very good. At first I couldn’t make head or tail of it or distinguish the characters. Only Middleton Murry was recognizable to my unaided intuition. Lawrence, if done at all, is not elaborated enough to be memorable.3 I don’t know whether I told you that two pages of Constable’s copy of the novel had disappeared, pages 3 & 4 of the Prologue. I have finally patched the thing up, in a way to disturb the parts already printed as little as possible, and incidentally have left out the passage about Mario finding the attraction of the fair sex plus fort que moi,4 and their presence like sunshine instead of daylight. I am partly sorry, but partly reconciled, as the Prologue now is a little shorter and a bit less overloaded.—I am shortly expecting the second & final proofs. The American edition is to be photographed from the English one, so that no separate revision will be needed. I am comfortably settled here for the summer, and work every morning—very slowly—on The Realm of Spirit. As stimulus, I have Alain, Les
1933–1936
5:207
Dieux, the Bhagavah-Gitâ, and the complete works of St. John of the Cross.5 Also, by chance, an article on artistic creation by Jacques Maritain, in my Spanish review.6 It has one very illuminating passage about the imageless nature of the élan vital,7 even in God. It plainly (to me) makes God = Matter. Yours affly G.S. 1 Having become bogged down in the writing of his ABC of Epistemology, Cory, with Santayana’s encouragement, began the novel Michael. The work, based on Cory’s life, was never published (Years, 153). 2 The 1928 novel by Aldous Huxley in which D. H. Lawrence and J. Middleton Murry served as models for the characters Rampion and Burlap, respectively. Bernhard Tauchnitz, the German publishing house, was founded in 1837 by Christian Bernhard Tauchnitz (1816–95), nephew of Karl Christoph Traugott Tauchnitz who established the first Tauchnitz publishing firm in 1798. Bernhard Tauchnitz began publishing their Collection of British and American Authors in 1941. The volumes were English-language editions for sale on the Continent, not legally to be taken into America or Britain. 3 John Middleton Murry (1889–1957), educated at Brasenose College, Oxford, served as literary critic for The Times of London (1914–19) and as editor of The Athenaeum (1919–21) and The Adelphi (1923–30). He wrote numerous books on literature, politics, and religion. His autobiographical Between Two Worlds appeared in 1935. D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence (1885–1930), an English author, wrote of primitive and natural passions, trying to show instinctive forces in man that might bring happiness. His books include Women in Love, The Plumed Serpent, and Lady Chatterley’s Lover. 4 Stronger than I am (French). 5 Les Dieux (Paris, 1934) was written by Émile Chartier (1868–1951, pen name Alain). The Bhagavad Gita (Sanskrit for “the song of God”) is an eighteen-part discussion between Krishna and Arjuna on the nature and meanings of life. It forms part of the Mahabharata. The Complete Works of Saint John of the Cross, Doctor of the Church, was published in Paris in 1934. Santayana also owned Aphorismes de Saint Jean de la Croix with Spanish and French on opposite pages (Bordeaux, 1924). 6 Cruz y Raya. 7 The vital impulse (French).
5:208
The Letters of George Santayana
To Otto Kyllmann 26 June 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Savoy Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy June 26, 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann I am not surprised at all that the people at the Thakeray Hotel might conceivably take umbrage at the passage you refer to: and I am not sure that the two King’s Arms inns, at Oxford and Sandford might not raise some objection—although if anything we are advertising them and rendering them more interesting. It would be easy to drop the name Thackeray, and say something even more appropriate to Miss Letitia Lamb,1 such as Ruskin Hotel, or Pickwick Hotel, or (if these are perhaps real places in London) the Hotel Cimabue. But as I say in the Epilogue, I have a weakness for real names of places, and should like to kept —ep the reference to the Thakeray Hotel if possible; but we might turn the passage into a compliment, that couldn’t but be taken in good part, if we said, “that inexpensive hotel for geniuses near Phidias2 and the British Museum? It might be crowded.” What do you think? Yours sincerely GSantayana [across] P.S. I have received a letter forwarded by Brown Shipley & Co today; so that evidently they haven’t given up the practice. It is hardly conceivable that they should do so without giving notice, but I have made enquiries. 1
A character in Puritan, Letitia Lamb is Mrs. Alden’s closest friend. Phidias was the Greek sculptor (c. 500–c. 432 B.C.) credited with creating the Parthenon frieze in Athens. A portion of this work was purchased by the British government in 1816 and is housed in a gallery at the British Museum. 2
1933–1936
To George Sturgis 28 June 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
5:209
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Savoy Cortina d’Ampezzo, June 28, 1935 Dear George I am established here comfortably enough for the summer, and working (slowly) on The Realm of Spirit: not that I mean to publish it, because The Realm of Truth should come first,1 but that I am more drawn at the moment to that subject, and also feel that perhaps it is the more important to have thought out, in case of accident. Cory could edit and publish both after I am gone. Meantime, I am in splendid health, take moderate walks, try to take moderate meals, and amuse myself with all sorts of reading. The second and final proofs of the novel will doubtless arrive soon, and will occupy me for a while, as I am anxious to have the book as free from blemishes as possible. The American edition is to be photographed (I don’t know exactly by what process) from the English one, so that no revision will be required in that case. How is it that you are so vague about the Sturgis family tree, when once you had charge of the book devoted to it? I don’t like middle names (as a rule) and forget them: otherwise I think I can draw up a table to show your exact relationship to Bob Barlow: you are “second cousins”: Nathaniel Russell Sturgis = Susan Parkman2 ↓
↓
Francis Shaw = Sarah
George = Josefina Borrás ↓
↓
E/ Mrs. Charles Russell Lowell. Susie Minturn Col. Robert Gould Shaw Mrs. George William Curtis
Nellie = General Barlow Robert = Ellen Hodges ↓
Bob Barlow
↓
YOU
5:210
The Letters of George Santayana
Bob Barlow’s mother, Nellie, was very pretty, and had married a rather common rough but energetic man, who had been a general in the Civil War. He used to say of his son Bob and Swelly Bangs (and I am not sure I wasn’t included): “The trouble with you young men is that you are rotten before you are ripe”. Bob is—I don’t believe I need say was—very fond of the fair sex, the weaker members of it especially; and he (like me) began to get bald early. He loves Paris. Yours afftly G.S. 1
Truth was published by Constable in 1937 and by Scribner’s in 1938. Spirit was published by both companies in 1940. 2 Nathaniel Russell Sturgis (1779–1856) of Mount Vernon Street, Boston, married Susan Parkman in 1804. They had twelve children, one of whom was George Sturgis (1817–57), Santayana’s mother’s first husband. Sarah Blake Sturgis (1815–1902), who became Mrs. Francis George Shaw, was a sister of George Sturgis and “by a pleasant arrangement that at once was established [Santayana] too called her ‘Aunt Sarah’ and repeatedly stayed at her house in Staten Island or in New York” (Persons, 51). The Shaws had five children. Josephine Shaw married Charles Russell Lowell Jr., a Civil War colonel who died at the battle of Cedar Creek. Santayana writes about Susie Shaw Minturn in his letter of 14 January 1897 to Susan Sastre. As an army colonel, Robert Gould Shaw (1837–1863) commanded the first black regiment in the field in the Civil War, the 54th Massachusetts. He was slain at Morris Island, South Carolina; a memorial statue by Saint-Gaudens is in the Boston Common. Anna Shaw (1836–1923) married the author and poet George William Curtis (d. 1892). Ellen “Nellie” Shaw (b. 1845), married General Francis Channing Barlow (1834–96) in 1867. She was his second wife. Barlow, a Union officer in the Civil War, practiced law in New York. He founded the Bar Association and held many state offices (secretary of state, United States marshall, attorney general). Santayana’s half brother, Robert Sturgis, was married (in 1890) to Ellen Gardner Hodges (d. 1918). They were the parents of George and Josephine Sturgis. (In the diagram, the broken lines are drawn in blue pencil, most likely by Santayana.)
To Manuel Komroff 29 June 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
C
/o Brown Shipley & C –o 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Cortina d’Ampezzo, June 29, 1935
Dear Mr. Komroff1 For my own part, nothing could be more satisfactory than that you should make a book of extracts from my writings for Boni’s Dollar Series.2 To be diffused, to be known, is half the battle, if not the whole of it. But
1933–1936
5:211
from your point of view, I ought to warn you that my friend Edman of Columbia is preparing a volume of that sort for Scribner; and that two very diligent persons at the Butler Library, also at Columbia, Mr. Buchler and Mr. Schwartz, have made a collection of my scattered lectures and reviews, with a bibliography, to be called Obiter Scripta, for which I ^ ^ have written a preface, and which, I hope, will also appear before long. A third book of my miscellany, published now, might glut the market, and be disadvantageous for all of you. Not to speak of my novel, which is coming out at last this year. Pearsall Smith’s book of Selections, the Little Essays,3 [illegible ]is ancient history. I took great pains in arranging it, and it may have had its uses, but, as you say, it represents only the earlier phase of my philosophy. If you ever return to Rome you will probably find me at the same place, and always glad to see you and to learn the news. Yours sincerely GSantayana [across] P.S. There is a photo by Elliott & Fry, of 1932, available for publication: it has appeared in Canby’s Saturday Review of Literature. I am sorry that, being in the country, I haven’t one at hand to send you. 1
Manuel Komroff (1890–1974), an American novelist and short-story writer, studied engineering, art, and music at Yale. He later wrote musical scores for movies and worked as an art and film critic. A socialist, Komroff edited English-language newspapers in both Russia and China. In 1924 he joined the staff of publishers Boni and Liveright and continued to publish fiction, mainly historical novels. 2 Santayana is referring to the Modern Library Series founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright. The books were inexpensive reprints of contemporary European and American works. Apparently this project was abandoned. 3 Essays was published in 1920.
To John Hall Wheelock 1 July 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Cortina, July 1, 1935 Dear Mr. Wheelock It is inevitable that there should be different circumstances in business in different countries, and even a different spirit, and I wish to leave the
5:212
The Letters of George Santayana
matter of royalties, in the case of The Last Puritan as in that of all my other books, entirely to your judgement. I note that you think it might be possible to increase the royalty to 15% after the sale of 7,500 copies, if it should ever come to that, which I don’t expect.1 Meantime the important point is that you should feel able to offer the book at $2.50, which seems a very moderate price nowadays for so long a work, and I hope that this price, and the appearance of being a novel, will lead a good many people to buy and to read it, who have n’t meddled yet with my philosophy. ^ ^ They will get the pill here gilded by cheapness and some jokes. We have patched up the matter of the missing pages in the Prologue (it turns out that two had been lost, pp. 3 & 4) by inserting a new and shorter passage, which I have composed expressly. But I sha’n’t be sorry to receive a copy of the origin,/ al, if you have already sent me one, in ^ ^ answer to my request of the other day. It may give me some hints useful in revising the proofs. I also note with pleasure that you suggest publishing Obiter Scripta in the autumn of 1936. That is not a long delay, and little more than would be needed to put the book through the press. I think Mr. Buchler and Mr Schwartz, as well as I, have every reason to be satisfied with that prospect. You may make your arrangements entirely with them, as I have done all that concerns me in the matter. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 In a letter of 28 September 1936 Wheelock wrote that the Scribner’s edition to date “has sold some 160,000 copies, and as the sale in this country continues steadily we feel that it may well reach 200,000 within the next year.”
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 4 July 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Savoy, Cortina d’Ampezzo, July 4, 1935 Dear Cory When your letter arrived yesterday, I had just sent you the July number of the Criterion to your London address. I suppose it will be forwarded. In reading it over, it seemed to me several times to smell of an addled mind: a mixture of absurdity and earnestness, of wierd superstition — with —e— xact— itude and competence. ; for instance, in the article by ^ ^
1933–1936
5:213
Yates,1 and in Eliot’s sacerdotal blessings and decisions concerning the latter. And I am rather tired of this perpetual talk about who is the best or the greatest poet or philosopher; as if different merits had the same measure. I am afraid England is becoming stranger and stranger to me, less and less appealing. I once loved it so much that this is rather a tragedy. I don’t think I want to read Eliot’s Canterbury oratorio:2 the extracts in the article you enclose are enough to show me the line he takes,3 and I see no sign of anything beautiful, of anything that would be worth retaining for its own sake. But I have sent for Spender’s book reviewed in this number: let me know if you want it.4 I have also sent for a French book by a man named Schuhl on Greek ideas, reviewed by More of Princeton;5 but that is a little off your line. The review by Belgion (usually rather an ass) seemed to be rather good: at least, I agree with him.6 Will you explain how Eliot and the archbishop of Canterbury can celebrate the memory of St. Thomas à Becket, who was a martyr for Papal Supremacy: also how Lord Halifax can celebrate the memory of the new St. John Fisher, another martyr /t for the same?7 I suppose they distinguish between Papal Supremacy and Church Autonomy: [illegible ]though the Anglican Church, but for the bonds imposed on it by the fact of Establishment and Government control, would dissolve into a rainbow of opinions, as in America. They would all be independent, but they would have no internal authority. What you say about my treatment of the Realm of Spirit is very sympathetic and very modest:8 but I ought to be regarded as myself an outsider to the Spiritual Life; I have at best only a partial insight and sympathy in that [illegible]field; yet, if I am able to work out my idea, it will be a contribution of some importance to the subject, because no one that I know of has ever conv/ceived it consistently from the naturalistic point of view and shown its justification on that basis. I find in Alain’s Les Dieux amid much obscurity and headiness, wonderful flashes: e.g. “L’attribut de puissance, délégué à l’esprit pur dans une sorte d’emportement, doit être pris comme la partie honteuse de la religion de l’esprit.9 There is my view in a nutshell. But Alain is incapable of thinking consecutively. G.S. [across] P.S. I note that the novel is to be by Lionel Grey, and will Dion Lecray, keep the secret.10 Ion Lecrady would be an anagram. Also Lion Decray, etc.
{
5:214
The Letters of George Santayana
[across page one] Second P.S. I have a qualm about the spelling of High Wycombe, town in Buckingham half way from London to Oxford. Will you please look at a map or ABC11 and send me a post-card saying if this is right? 1 William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), Irish poet and author, received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923. He was fascinated with mysticism and the supernatural. He wrote “Mãndookya Upanishad” for The Criterion (14 [ July 1935]: 547–58). 2 Murder in the Cathedral (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1935), T. S. Eliot’s first play, is considered his best. The subject of this play is the martyrdom of Thomas à Becket (c. 1118–70), an English prelate, archbishop of Canterbury (1162–70). Becket defended the Church’s rights without compromise and had to flee to France in 1164. Papal pressure reconciled Henry II with him. After returning to England in 1170, he was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by Henry’s knights. Canonized in 1172, his shrine was plundered by Henry VIII and his name erased from the English church calendar. 3 Unlocated. 4 Stephen Spender (1909–95), an English poet, and friend and follower of W. H. Auden, was a leading Marxist poet of the 1930s. He wrote The Destructive Element: A Study of Modern Writers and Beliefs (London: J. Cape, 1935). 5 Pierre-Maxime Schuhl’s Essai sur la formation de la pensée grecque (Paris: Librairie Felix Alcan, 1934) was reviewed by Paul Elmer More. 6 Montgomery Belgion’s review is of Sir Arthur Eddington’s New Pathways in Science (New York: Macmillan; Cambridge, England: The University Press, 1935) and Albert Einstein’s The World As I See It (New York, 1934). 7 Edward Frederick Lindley Wood, 3d Viscount Halifax (1881–1959), the English statesman, was a conservative opponent of Anthony Eden. In 1935 he served as war secretary and leader of the House of Lords. By 1938, when Eden resigned over the issue of German appeasement, Lord Halifax became Britain’s new foreign secretary. Known for his scholarship at Cambridge, Saint John Fisher (1459–1535) was an English prelate, cardinal of the Roman Church, and bishop of Rochester (1504–34). He refused to acknowledge the supremacy of the king and to accede to the Act of Succession. In 1534 he was imprisoned in the Tower and then beheaded. He was canonized as a martyr in 1935. 8 “… I simply said that The Realm of Spirit might well be his most ‘intimate’ work, and that I felt totally inadequate to help him in any way with it” (Years, 154). 9 The attribute of power, assigned to pure spirit by a kind of passionate impulse, should be regarded as the part of the religion of spirit of which one has to be ashamed (French). 10 The pseudonym under which Cory intended to publish Michael. 11 Santayana spelled it correctly. Philips’ A.B.C. Pocket Atlas-Guide to London and its Outer Districts (London, Liverpool: George Philip & Son, Ltd., 1934).
1933–1936
To Mary Potter Bush 5 July 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
5:215
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Savoia, Cortina July 5, 1935 Dear Mrs. Bush You are right, you see, in supposing that, rather helplessly, I have come again to Cortina, but not to the Miramonti, partly because I didn’t like the room they offered me, and partly because from the town I can vary the direction and length of my walks better than from that outlying startingpoint. I was a bit tired of walking daily to the village and back, and also of the crowd of people. Here I am more as in a town, that is, more in my element. I am reading Alain’s Les Dieux, the most obscure French book I ever have come upon, ragged and perverse in places, but also full of wonderful insights. Besides, apart from his vulgar politics, I agree with him, and am encouraged to find so penetrating and spontaneous a thinker taking precisely my view of “spirit”. He says: “L’attribut de puissance, délégué à l’esprit pur dans une sorte d’emportement, doit être pris comme la partie honteuse de la religion de l’esprit”. I must quote this in my book, The Realm of Spirit, which I am working on at present, being in the mood for M— atter Truth should be published first. But my it, although The Realm of — mind isn’t entirely clear for sheer philosophy, as the second proofs of the novel are about to reach me, and I shall have to go over those 723 pages once more. We are having some qualms about the hotels and inns also ^ parsonages mentioned, all real ones, and the possible law-suits that the ^ proprietors might bring for defaming them or their establishments; but I am careful to kill or remove all the persons, and not to say anything not flattering about the houses; so that I hope to escape prosecution. My weakness for real spots and their atmosphere makes me hate to give false names to places, or even to persons, when the true — thing name is not pos^ ^ itively out of the question. I hope people won’t think it is impertinence: it is genuine love of truth. If you don’t feel up to going to Paris—which will be on your way home—I can hardly hope to see you here this year, or in Venice—where there is, by the way, a Titian1 exhibition open. I — shexpect to be at Danieli’s in September and part of October, until I venture to return to Rome.
5:216
The Letters of George Santayana
I hope Mr. Bush will find his cure efficacious, and that your summer will be otherwise pleasant for both of you Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Titian (Tiziano Vecellio, 1477–1576) is considered the greatest Venetian painter of the sixteenth century.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 11 July 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS postcard: Columbia)
Hotel Savoia, Cortina, July 11, 1935 Thank you for your card and the reassurance about High Wycombe. The fact is I had got it wrong, because I had also mentioned Wyckham, the founder of Winchester College.1 Another anagram would be Neil Corday. Your translation is far too mild. Honteux = shameful; but here perhaps the exact meaning might be rendered as follows: “The attribute of power, assigned to pure spirit by a kind of passionate impulse, should be regarded as the part of the religion of spirit of which one has to be ashamed.” The pious mind is stampeded to do this: it must pile on all the absolutes on one object. G.S. 1 William of Wykeham (1324–1404) founded an English public school called Winchester College. He was bishop of Winchester and also founder of New College, Oxford.
To Charles Augustus Strong 13 July 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Savoia, Cortina July 13, 1935 Dear Strong Thank you very much for these two French discourses: Tardieu’s is splendid at the beginning; then it seemed to degenerate into the helplessness of politicians and reformers with a nostrum, ridiculously contrasting with the massiveness of the disease to be cured.1 Franchet d’Espèrey,
1933–1936
5:217
apart from fulsomeness, was instructive: I thought of the lessons the Italians might learn for their operations in Ethiopia: let us hope these won’t prove disastrous. But the jewel was Abel Bonnard’s speech: too precious, perhaps, or too incidentally precious.2 These good poetic things should come only when led up to by mounting feeling in the preceding passage: and then one should be let down softly, as if that were not a climax but only a wave, with other like waves rising behind it. Nevertheless, this speech has real eloquence, because it discloses the grandeur and beauty of real things on a great scale. I was very much moved by it. [across ] Do you wan’t these cuttings back? I shall throw them away other^ wise. [end across ] ^ . There is no reason why you shouldn’t ask Cory to help you—or rather stimulate you—in revising your essays. He is free, as far as I am concerned, to live wherever he likes and do whatever he likes. He isn’t working for me at all at present, and he hasn’t done much for the novel, except giving me a few hints and some encouragement. I regard the allowance I give him not as a salary for work, but as a sort of pension or scholarship, to keep him going. Frankly, I hardly think he has done much to deserve it; but we have got him into the habit of depending on us, and for the years I am likely to live, I am willing to go on supporting him, so long as I can afford it. He might therefore perfectly well go to Florence during the winter, and talk with you about the matters that occupy your mind. I think he might be willing to do so gratis, as he likes to come to Italy and I don’t want him next winter in Rome. Only, in that case, I think you ought to consider his temperament and comfort: not press him too hard; not keep him too long on one subject; and have him taken comfortably up and down in the motor, and not forced to take the tram. He is still delicate, though his digestion is better, and he is more sensitive to little things than perhaps you realize. It is warmer this year in Cortina than I have ever known it—too warm for walking with any pleasure Otherwise all goes well Yours ever G.S. 1 André Tardieu (1876–1945), a conservative French statesman and politician, was a delegate at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and served as prime minister of France during the Depression years (1929–32). He wrote L’Heure de la décision (Paris: Flammarion, 1934). 2 Perhaps Santayana is referring to Discours du Maréchal Franchet d’Espèrey et réponse de M. Abel Bonnard (Paris, 1935) by Louis Félix Marie Francois Franchet d’Espèrey (1856–1942), World War I general, and Abel Bonnard (1883–1968), poet, essayist, and minister of education and culture.
5:218
The Letters of George Santayana
To Charles Augustus Strong 16 July 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Savoia, Cortina July 16, 1935 Dear Strong I am very sorry to hear that you are laid up with what must be a painful complication, and, as you say, it seems a strange accident to come just after a cure, which should have thoroughly purified the blood. Let us hope it is the devil forcing his way out, and leaving you in peace for the future. I too have never heard of Abel Bonnard, but he must be a poet. Yours ever G.S.
To Otto Kyllmann 20 July 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Savoy, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, July 20, 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann I have sent you today the second corrected proofs of The Last Puritan, asking to see further proofs only of the two pages in which I have changed the text a little, in order to remove (I hope) every possibility of complaint by H / hotel or inn keepers. But there are many other corrections (45, exactly) most of them matters of a comma or apostrophe, but some others rather important. May we rely on the printers to see that all these corrections have been made, or would it be safer to ask for a third proof of the whole? I don’t know how much delay or expense such a request would involve, but rely on you to make it for me, if you think it would be better. Yours sincerely GSantayana
1933–1936
To John Hall Wheelock 22 July 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
5:219
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Cortina, July 22, 1935
Dear Mr. Wheelock Here are the two agreements, for The Last Puritan and for Edman’s Selections. I hope that the Editor is getting something for his zeal and labours. He hasn’t communicated with me at all on the subject, and I am curious to see his Introduction, as well as the choice he may have made of passages from my books. Of course, I know from previous utterances of his that he is a sympathetic critic, and that on the literary side, at least, he will make a judicious selection. I have just revised the second proof of The Last Puritan. Thank you for sending me the pages that had been mislaid. I have retained the new version, which is shorter, and I return the old one, in case you care to join it to the rest of the old manuscript. Not that I [illegible ]wish to preserve the latter:1 but I know that some people collect such things. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 No manuscript has been located. The ribbon copy of the first half of the typescript corrected by Santayana (including the original Prologue) is located in the Clifton Waller Barrett Library within the University of Virginia Library. The second half is in the Christopher Morley Papers at the Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 26 July 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Hotel Savoy, Cortina d’Ampezzo July 26, 1935
Dear Cory I am sending you the £5 extra which you want for your golf-clubs, and am glad that you have found another sport like billiards, and unlike tennis or swimming, that will do for your old age: but I am counting these £5 as half your eventual Christmas present, because I don’t think you should expect other additions to your allowance. I doubt whether you will get anythink/ g from Eliot, but your novel might bring you something next year, especially if it is suitable (as I should think it might be) for a film.
5:220
The Letters of George Santayana
I say this because I have got a request for the film-rights of The Last Puritan! I sent the letter to Wheelock, as a sort of joke, and this is how he answers: “It may interest you to know that we have had several requests from moving-picture corporations for proof-sheets of The Last Puritan. The Paramount Corporation, in particular, has been much interested.” And then, in the contract with Scribner, which Wheelock encloses, they declare themselves entitled to 15% of the sale for moving-picture rights. Presumably, I should get 85%. But I can’t think what episodes of such a talky-talky, sedentary story could be shown on the screen, unless it were the murder in College Chapel, or Jim making love to Mrs. Bowler1 and shoving her first husband into the lock. Oliver’s dream about this would really be excellent for dissolving views, if only the guiding motives were not so unconventional I have sent off the second proof, with two slight variations made in the text to avoid possible complaints from hotels and inns, about which, in the case of the Thackeray h/Hotel in Great Russell Street, Mr. Kyllman wrote expressing some doubts. I now make Mrs Alden say: “that convenient hotel — nefor geniuses near Phidias and the British Museum?—It might be crowded.” I don’t think anyone could object to that. Do you have much in your novel about Yale? And is it, like Henry James’s, international?2 This reminds me of Spender’s book. I too was a little disappointed on the whole. He hasn’t a single idea really, but I learned a good deal about Henry James and T. S. Eliot. The latter illustrates Spender’s point about a political subject being requisite to any fiction worth having: but James’s “destructive element”—the alienation of the intellect from the milieu—is mystical and moral, rather than political: I mean, that the individual spirit might feel such alienation in any cout/ntry at any epoch, the convention destroyed by reflection being morality or life itself, not a special form of society. Spender doesn’t seem to know much history, and his politics are not to my taste: but I don’t mind his Bolshevism. It is his British liberalism that seems to me unworthy of a critical mind. I am deep in S. John of the Cross, and keenly interested in deciphering, as well as I may, how far his union with God, and his God himself, are purely mystical and philosophical, and how far dogmatically Christian. This is very important for my own elaborate treatment of “union”, on which I am now at work. I ask 1–st With what is this union to nd be? and 2– What sort and degree of union is possible? Yours affly G.S.
1933–1936
5:221
[across] P.S. Strong is laid up again with an ulcer in his “leg”. Perhaps it is where la jambe change de nom.3 S / I don’t think Spencer’s First Principles, but rather his Psychology4 (which I never possessed) contains the “critical realism” you are after. 1
Minnie Bowler. Henry James (1843–1916), brother of William James, was an American novelist, short-story writer, and man of letters. 3 Where “the leg changes its name” (French), i.e., his bottom (see 26 October 1934). 4 Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) applied the study of natural sciences and psychology to philosophy, finding in the doctrine of evolution the unifying principle of knowledge and applying it to all phenomena. He did not deal with the “unknowable” but instead dealt with those things which could be compared with and related to other things. Santayana refers here to Spencer’s First Principles (New York: A. L. Burt, 1880) and Principles of Psychology (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1880). 2
To David Page 26 July 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy C
(MS: Columbia)
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Cortina, July 26, 1935 Dear Mr. Page Where do I advocate “absolutism” in morals, or “renunciation”— except of what we can’t get? My view of the relation of morals to nature at large is well understood by “Henry Queen”1 where he speaks, in the article on me that you have kindly sent me, of “morality submerged in naturalism” but not so submerged that new “seed for cultivation” is not always ripening. Morality is finite, form is finite; and the infinite, in its movement, always has to be assuming some form: so that morality—not one type, but some type, of vital harmony—is always native and necessary to life, yet has no absolute or cosmic authority, since a different morality may, and probably will, ensue with the same natural vi rtue justification. —— This theory no doubt tempts the spirit to look beyond any particular good and evil; but spirit is a psychic faculty and the psyche is a principle of choice and organization, the principle of morality: so that the healthy spirit can never outgrow or discard natural piety. I didn’t mean to be so long-winded, but the subject is tempting. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Unidentified.
5:222
The Letters of George Santayana
To Otto Kyllmann 27 July 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Savoy, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy July 27, 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann th Your letter of the 24– reopens the question which had been in my mind from the beginning in regard to The Last Puritan. The book is really “a Memoir in the Form of a Novel”, and perhaps it might have been wiser not to publish it until everything and everybody concerned, including the author, had ceased to exist. Without being an autobiography, the narrative is rooted at every point in my personal recollections, and it would be impossible to remove Oxford, Iffley, or Eton (not to speak of the American part) without destroying the whole texture of the book. Take Iffley, for instance. I have never known, or heard anything about, any Vicar of Iffley or his family: the story is entirely fictitious; yet if whoever was Vicar there, or his family, before the war, were still alive, and chose to regard my picture as a portrait, the p. 321 libel would seem outrageous; because I reveal unpleasant secrets about his marriage, attribute to him ultra-modernist views (when p. 6841 he may be really an Anglo-Catholic) and make his son a very et passim shady character. Yet here again, although the personage, Jim Darnley, is a pure fiction, the court-martial, described as sentencpp. 200– ing him and others to be dismissed from the Navy, really took 202. place: and might one of the survivors, the sub-lieutenant, for instance, complain that my description of him was libellous?2 So p. 201 the episode on pages 654–656 is (with slight additions) historical; only the young clergyman’s name was not Fulleylove,3 and it was during the Boer war,4 not in 1916, that I myself, not Mario (who is also a perfectly fictitious character) had this conversation with him in the coffee-room of the King’s Arms. –[ And by the way, the 19 p 656 shillings a day, then the stipend for a young chaplain with the Army, in South Africa may not be right for Flanders during the ^ ^ last war. –] This is of little consequence; but if my casual friend, whom I have never heard of again, should see this account, he would surely recognize himself, perhaps not with entire pleasure;
1933–1936
5:223
yet nobody else could possibly suspect that it was this old gentleman, as he must be now, that was the original of that simple youth. These are some of the ingrained references and interweavings of fact with fiction which cannot be removed from the book in any case. If they are too dangerous, we must simply suspend publication, at least in England. But there are other incidental touches, like the one about the Thackeray Hotel, that could be modified. I changed — in the text a/ in page 643 in order to indicate that Mr. Bowler, as well as his wife, were not still landlord and landlady of the King’s Arms at Sandford. I had already taken this precaution in regard to the Darnleys at Iffley, killing the Vicar and his son, and removing his wife and daughter5. But if this matter of dates is not sufficient to preclude complaints, and the former occupants feel that they are maligned, although it is most unlikely that anyx Hardly thing resembling them should be found in my description, I don’t possible see any way of avoiding the danger except to change the namesx. in the case of If we called Sandford, say, Bablock, and the King’s Arms, say, the Iffley, Red Lion, that would leave the places still recognizable to those however. who know the topography of Oxford, and for other people there would be no loss of local colour. It would be a nuisance, because the names occur so often, but certainly less a nuisance than an eventual lawsuit. I don’t see how the phrase “They say he is suing for a divorce”, p. 643 could seem objectionable after the man has been described as a drunkard and a c/ habitual cuckold, and his wife has run away from pp. 319– 320 him. If a former landlord of the King’s Arms claims that this is a description of him, we must frankly allow that it is not flattering. There is also a picture of the King’s Arms at Oxford, on the whole [illegible ]favourable (it was my favourite inn at Oxford when p 623 I wasn’t in lodgings) but in which some words could be changed if it was thought necessary. But if we change the name to the Red Lion, without changing the place or the description, would it be enough? Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
And throughout (Latin). In the novel the court-martial was for sexual impropriety. 3 Robin Fulleylove. 2
5:224
The Letters of George Santayana
4 The Boer War (1899–1902) was the culmination of a conflict between the British and the Boers (South Africans of Dutch descent), both of whom had interests in South Africa. 5 Rose Darnley.
To John Hall Wheelock 27 July 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Cortina, July 27, 1935
Dear Mr. Wheelock In looking over the proofs of The Last Puritan, Mr. Kyllmann of Constable & Company has reopened a question which had been on my mind, and which I had proposed to him, at the beginning: namely, whether the mixture of fact and fiction, and in particular the references to places, landlords, landladies, and incumbents of churches, might not give offence and cause people to bring suits for libel. We are making a few alterations, and Mr. Kyllmann is thinking of o/ taking legal advice on the subject; but the book is really what I call it, “a Memoir in the Form of a Novel” and, although not an autobiography, it is rooted throughout in my personal recollections. It would be impossible to remove the setting in the places I know and have frequented, or the use of episodes that have actually occurred in my life-time or in my familiar circle. Is there any danger of this being resented, in regard to the American part? All the leading characters are fictitious; but the house in Beacon Street is real, Mr. Nathaniel Alden is a recognizable caricature of two real pes/rsons, long since dead, & both old bachelors;1 Montana must have senators; would any of them think himself libelled in my Senator Lunt?2 Something like the homicide in the Harvard College Chapel was said to have been perpetrated, before my time, [illegible ]by a well-known person of excellent family, dead too; but his children are living. The Secret Society, I believe, has now changed its character or ceased to exist; but it was notorious all through my thirty years at Harvard.3 There must have been a head-coach of the Harvard crew in the years covered by my account of Oliver’s appearance there: I don’t know, or have forgotten, who he was: would he regard my description of — his Dr. Wilcox’s manners as a libel? These and ^ ^ other such points might be raised if people don’t sympathize with my reconstruction of the past. It is a fanciful reconstruction, and generally
1933–1936
5:225
entirely fictitious. As you know, for instance, there is no Great Falls, Connecticut; but I invented that town because I don’t know any New England town, except Boston and Cambridge, well enough to put my story into it. I believe—I have asked about it—that there are no Van de Weyers in New York: anyhow, the family I describe is wholly imaginary. Yet a lot of flotsam from my experience & observation comes up throughout; if I didn’t use it, I should have no materials; and therefore it is a question of leaving the book practically as it stands, or suspending publication altogether. What do you think? Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Santayana based this character on Dr. George Parkman (1790–1849), one of Boston’s most notable philanthropists, who disappeared in November of 1849 while collecting rents on his properties. John Webster, a professor of chemistry at the Harvard Medical School and a debtor to Parkman, was convicted of murdering Dr. Parkman after a janitor discovered Parkman’s hidden remains in the Medical School laboratory. The other “old bachelor” is supposedly Mr. Thomas Wigglesworth (1775–1855) of another prominent Boston family. (See Puritan, 582). 2 Roscoe C. Lunt. 3 The secret society of Puritan is the “D.K.E.,” “Dickey,” or “Deeks,” as it was variously called. (Samuel Eliot Morison, Three Centuries of Harvard 1636–1936 [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936], 423–24.) For the homicide in the chapel, see Puritan, 54–55, and corresponding textual note on page 586.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 28 July 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS postcard: Columbia)
Cortina, July 28, 1935 I have come to the end of Alain’s book, which re-echoes the note of the passage I quoted to you before. This is his last sentence: “L’esprit saura se priver de puissance, de toute espèce de puissance; tel est le plus haut règne. Or, le Calvaire annonce cela même, de si éloquente et de si violente façon, que je n’ajouterai aucun commentaire”.1 What do you think of that? G.S. 1 Spirit will learn to renounce power, every sort of power; such is the highest dominion. Now, Calvary states this very idea in such an eloquent and violent fashion that I will not venture further comment (French).
5:226
The Letters of George Santayana
To Otto Kyllmann 1 August 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Savoy, Cortina d’Ampezzo Italy, Aug. 1, 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann I shall await with interest your decision about the place-names in The Last Puritan. Since there will probably be some changes to make, and I have discovered errata that had escaped my not very keen eyes, perhaps it would be better to let me have a third proof of the whole book. In case, however, this is inconvenient, I copy the errata discovered so far on the next leaf, so that you may forward them to the printer.1 Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Constable never sent a third set of proofs, and the listing of errata is unlocated.
To Charles Augustus Strong 6 August 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Savoy, Cortina d’Ampezzo Aug. 6, 1935 Dear Strong I have been very remiss in not thanking you before for the number of “Philosophy” with your translation of Voltaire,1 mise-au-point,2 and poetic coda. I had vagu[illegible ]ely expected to have something to report, but nothing seems to have happened. I have received a coloured post-card from your son-in-law in New York, with a view of the “Rockefeller Center” at night, and a few words in Spanish saying they were returning to France early in August. I don’t remember whether you have seen them this summer, or are going to make another trip later to Paris. I suppose not, for financial reasons. If you think of coming to Venice, you will probth ably find me there after September 10– . As I told you, I am working now on The Realm of Spirit, but I make very slow progress. Some ideas occur, but the development and ordering of them has become very difficult, with the short-windedness and self-rep-
1933–1936
5:227
etition of old age. When I return to Rome I mean to read over all my old MS on this subject—an immense pile—and mark with a blue pencil such passages as I think worth incorporating in the final draft, together with an indication of the chapter to which they might be annexed. Then, if I ^ ^ have a clear enough head, I may get the whole thing into some shape. As a stimulus I am re-reading and annotating the entire works (1,000 pages) of St. John of the Cross. A large part is irrelevant to my purpose, as it is ordinary Catholic doctrine, but I am trying to understand the realities for which these spiritual intuitions or conventions may stand. E.g. With what is the mystic united? And what degree and kind of union is it possible to conceive with that object? I am also amusing myself with making verses—like you—by way of translating those of St. John of the Cross, which are very beautiful and very erotic. The Song of Songs3 was a great boon to the Catholic Saints: it enabled them to be Freudian without ceasing to be proper.4 Cory writes that he has become an enthusiastic golfer, but that he still tries to devote his mornings to pure thought. I hope that your last ailment is cured, and that you are enjoying the cooler weather which has now set in. Yours ever G.S. 1 François Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694–1778) became the leader of the Enlightenment, arguing for freedom and tolerance. He disseminated the ideas of Locke and Newton in a land dominated by Cartesianism and the speculative metaphysics of Leibniz. Most of these observations are in his Letters Concerning the English Nation (1733), the work responsible for bringing the social and political ideals of the English to the continent. His Candide (1759) attacks Leibniz’s optimism. Though a militant theist, Voltaire opposed Christianity. Strong’s article has not been located. 2 Restatement (French). 3 The Song of Songs, also called the Song of Solomon, is a collection of poetry set in the form of songs that discusses the love between Solomon and his bride. 4 Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was an Austrian psychologist and the originator of psychoanalysis.
5:228
The Letters of George Santayana
To John Hall Wheelock 18 August 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London. S.W.1 Cortina, Aug. 18, 1935 Dear Mr. Wheelock I am not answering your telegram by cable because as you say you assume my consent. I infer that my silence will confirm that assumption, which is quite correct. As you probably know, I have written various articles formerly for The Saturday Review of Literature, and have had pleasant relations with Mr. Canby, although I don’t altogether share the sentiments of his paper. Apart from politics, I am surprised at the extravagant praise they lavish on almost every author reviewed. Is it a mutual admiration society? However, that has nothing to do with the advantage of having him publish these extracts, I suppose from Prof. Edman’s book, which will serve as an advertisement for that volume, and perhaps also for The Last Puritan. Thank you also for your reassuring letter about the latter. Mr. Kyllmann has not yet expressed his final opinion on the question of possible actions for libels on the premisses, hardly on the persons, of vicars and innkeepers, but I am glad that in America, at least, we shall be safe Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 25 August 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Savoy, Cortina Aug. 25, 1935 Dear Cory Your maturing ideas about your novel seem to me excellent, and I hope when you come to the end you will make the solution genuine, and not merely perfunctory, or as you say, to please the ladies. A man doesn’t want to be possessed by his wife, or by anything else, but he wants, if he is normal, to be devoted. Freedom and self-expression eat themselves
1933–1936
5:229
up, and become nothing, unless we find persons or arts or ambitions that we can live for whole-heartedly. Can you tell me anything about Bonamy Dobrée?1 He has written to me, asking me to contribute an essay on Berkeley to a book he is editing on the 18th century.2 I have accepted, conditionally, because I feel that I have something to say, and that a just analysis of Berkeley’s position would clear up the present muddle about “sense-data” etc., without letting my personal views intrude too much, and arouse the hostility or prejudice of professional critics. Irwin Edman is coming to stay “some weeks” at Bolzano, and threatens to look me up here.3 He seems to say, in his letter, that my Obiter Scripta are to appear this year, instead of his Selections, which are postponed. It seems that advanced copies of The Last Puritan have already been distributed in America to the critics, since Edman has read one, and is to write a review for The New York Times.4 Meantime the question of place-names seems to be holding up the printing in England. Yours affly G.S 1
Bonamy Dobrée (1891–1974), English scholar and critic, was professor of English literature at the University of Leeds from 1936 to 1955. 2 George Berkeley (1685–1753) founded the doctrine of subjective idealism–the theory that all qualities are known only in the mind, that matter does not exist apart from its being perceived, and that the observing mind of God makes possible the continued apparent existence of material objects. “Bishop Berkeley (1685–1753)” was published in From Anne to Victoria: Essays by Various Hands (London: Cassell and Co., Ltd., 1937, 75–88). 3 “Bolzano is not a very attractive place for a holiday, but Edman wanted to be near Santayana and at the same time not prove a nuisance” (Years, 158). 4 New York Times Book Review (2 February 1936).
To Bonamy Dobrée 25 August 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Leeds)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, S.W.1 Cortina, Aug. 25, 1935 Dear Sir, You are not wrong in supposing that your suggestion would interest me, and I am especially pleased that you should trust me to write about Berkeley, in spite of the centre of my own thought lying in such a different quarter. I have a great affection for Berkeley notwithstanding, and
5:230
The Letters of George Santayana
there are some things that I have long wished to say, by way of interpreting him, and showing his logical place, rather out of the single line of supposed progress in which the historians of philosophy have made him march. I am therefore inclined to accept the opportunity you so kindly offer me. You won’t mind, I suppose, if my paper should be a little shorter than you propose, or if it is not biographical, as circumstances oblige me to work almost without books of reference. Should I, on trial, find that my ideas cannot take shape, I will write again within a week or two, confessing my inability to go on. Yours very truly GSantayana
To Otto Kyllmann 26 August 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Savoy, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. Aug. 26, 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann th I have telegraphed today, in answer to your letter of the 24– saying 1 “G / Yes, go ahead.” It is a relief to know that, like the Italians, we may venture to do so without minding sanctions. I have found three more trifling errata which I send you on the next leaf.2 If it is too late for this impression, they can be corrected in a later one. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Kyllmann had written that an experienced reader had gone through the manuscript and had concluded that it was unlikely that anything in the novel would be regarded as libelous. 2 Unlocated.
1933–1936
To Otto Kyllmann 28 August 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
5:231
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Savoy, Cortina d’Ampezzo Italy Aug. 28, 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann In looking over correspondence about The Last Puritan, now practically closed, I find the enclosed,1 which I had forgotten. Would you mind replying, if you think it worth while, and have any views on the subject. My experience with would-be translators is that they hardly ever carry out their proposal, but this might conceivably be an exception. I shouldn’t ask for any royalty for myself, but should like some assurance that the translator was competent. Yours sincerely GSantayana P. T. O. P.S. I also enclose a list of persons to whom I should like copies of The Last Puritan to be sent.2 As to my own copies, I should be much obliged if you would keep them for me until I return to Rome in October. I will then write again about them. What is [across right margin] the binding to be, and the jacket? “Rich but not gawdy,”3 I hope. Daniel Cory, 52, Cranley Gardens, S.W.7. Logan Pearsall Smith Esq., 11, St. Leonards Terrace, Chelsea, S.W. Miss Rudston Brown,4 Secretary of the Royal Society of Literature, 2, Bloomsbury Square, W.C. Miss Evelyn Tindall, The Cottage, Kennett, Cambs. The Countess Russell, Mas-des-Roses, Mougins, A.P., France. Le Marquis de Piedrablanca de Guana,5 54, rue de Lorraine, St. Germain-en-Laye, France. Marchesa Origo, “La Foce”, Chianciano, Siena, Italy. C.A. Strong Esq., “Le Balze”, Fiesole, Florence, Italy. Don Antonio Marichalar, Independencia 2, Madrid. Baron A.W. von Westenholz,6 Sophienterrasse 14, Hamburg. 1
Unlocated. The accompanying list is typed and marked “Copy.” in a hand other than that of Santayana. 2
5:232
The Letters of George Santayana
3 From Polonius’s advice to Laertes in Hamlet (I,iii,73–75): “Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, / But not exprest in fancy; rich, not gaudy: / For the apparel oft proclaims the man.” 4 Florence Lucy Rudston Brown (b. 1875) translated works on Italian art. 5 George Cuevas. 6 Santayana said Albert von Westenholz was “one of my truest friends. Personal affection and intellectual sympathies were better balanced and fused between him and me than between any other person” (Persons, 261–65). Santayana met the German aristocrat at Harvard, where Westenholz was a student, in the early 1900s.
To John Hall Wheelock 28 August 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1. Cortina, Aug. 28, 1935 Dear Mr. Wheelock After a long delay, Mr. Kyllmann has decided that we may risk printing The Last Puritan as it stands, after having made the slight alterations already agreed upon. He asks me to telegraph my consent to go to press at once; and I have done so, in order not to cause further delay, although I should have liked to see a third proof, the second having still been full of errata, which I trust have been corrected. I have since discovered three more,1 trifling ones, which I have forwarded to Mr. Kyllmann; but in case it is too late for this impression, I repeat them on the adjoining half-leaf, thinking that perhaps you might have them made by hand in your copy, before the photographing (or whatever the process is) has begun. Prof. Edman has written saying that his Selections are postponed and Obiter Scripta are to appear this year instead. I am rather glad of it. I enclose lists of the people to whom I should like copies of both books to be sent in my name.2 Yours sincerely GSantayana
1933–1936
5:233
Errata in “The Last Puritan” Page 298, line 12, omit comma after “ducks”. Page 479, line 8
for “sheer”
Page 643, line 12,
“as”
read shear a
1
These corrections were made in both the English and the American editions. Unlocated.
2
To Otto Kyllmann 3 September 1935 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Savoy, Cortina d’Ampezzo Italy th but after Sept. 10– Hotel Danieli, Venice Sept. 3rd 1935 r Dear M Kyllmann With regard to possible German translations of The Last Puritan,1 I gladly accept your suggestion that the matter be referred to the Agent whom you recommend; and he could make such terms for us (you ought to get half, if we get anything) as are usual. His fee could come out of my share. Of course I have no objection to making a charge, except that I would rather facilitate the diffusion of the book than get any money out of it. I therefore return the card from Vienna once more, and leave the affair entirely in your hands. As to the jacket, I like the lettering and the note very much, but the colour of “Peter Abelard”, with white letters, somehow doesn’t seem to me suitable for the last puritan.2 It is absurd for me to make suggestions on such a subject to people of such experience as you and your collaborators. I have had my way in the text; it is fair that the public taste should have its way in the presentation of it. Nevertheless I can’t help liking the blue purple of my other books better than the magenta proposed; and other combinations, such a blue-grey with black lettering, or pale buff with green lettering, swim before my mind’s eye. I enclose the cover and a fly-leaf of a Spanish review which I like particularly, to show you what
}
5:234
The Letters of George Santayana
I mean.3 But I should think the first point to settle was the colour of the binding, and then the jacket could be made to harmonize with that. There is a slight inaccuracy in your note, although perhaps a fortunate one. Oliver’s father was born in Boston (in 1855) but he himself in his mother’s house in Connecticut, on October 1–st 1890. –[ I know a great deal about these people that is not set down in the book. –] The mention of Boston, however, is better, because it gives the reader the right note at once, and suggests genteel Puritanism. I should therefore let the thing stand as it is, or if you care to make a change you might say “was born near Boston in 1890.” I am moving (as I indicate at the top) to the Hotel Danieli in Venice on th Sept. 10– to remain there about a month, before returning to Rome as usual Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 A German translation, Der letzte Puritaner. Die Geschichte eines tragischen Lebens, was done by Luise Laporte and Gertrude Grote (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1936). 2 Pierre Abélard (1079–1142), a French philosopher and teacher credited with founding the University of Paris, is chiefly remembered for the tragic events of his life. Helen Waddell (1889–1965) wrote Peter Abelard, a Novel (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1933). 3 Unlocated.
To Constable and Co. Ltd. 13 September 1935 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Temple) Hotel Danieli, Venice. Sept. 13, 1935
Messrs Constable & Co London. Gentlemen I am glad to know that The Last Puritan is to be published on th October 17– As to my “author’s copies,” I should be much obliged if you would send me only two for the present, addressed to the Hotel Bristol, Rome, where I shall then be, and one other to Mr A. J. Onderdonk,1 IV. Argentinier Strasse, 4, Vienna, Austria, and if you would keep the others
1933–1936
5:235
for me until some later occasion, as living in hotels I have little space for the books that are always accumulating. Yours faithfully GSantayana 1 Santayana’s friendship with Andrew Joseph Onderdonk began when the latter was an undergraduate (Harvard, 1910). Onderdonk graduated from the law school in 1913 and became a Wall Street lawyer and an expert in international law. Santayana had named Onderdonk his literary executor until 1928, when Daniel Cory assumed that role.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 14 September 1935 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Danieli, Venice Sept. 14, 1935 Dear Cory The enclosed reached me today. The English edition is to be published th on Oct. 17– . You will receive a copy. I am reading Luce on Berkeley & Malebranche,1 and think he is right on the main point, but rather stupid and monotonous in details. My essay on Berkeley is almost done, but not yet well ordered. It isn’t wanted until March, so that there will be plenty of time to let it rest and then review it and revise it with a critical mind. It is very “warm”. Do you care to have Luce’s book or have you got it? Yours affly G.S. 1
Arthur Aston Luce (1882–1977), professor of philosophy at Trinity College and Canon of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, wrote Berkeley and Malebranche: A Study in the Origins of Berkeley’s Thought (London, 1934). Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715), a French Cartesian philosopher, stressed the dualism of mind and matter and the doctrine of occasionalism; he maintained that interaction between the two is impossible.
5:236
The Letters of George Santayana
To Charles Augustus Strong 17 September 1935 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Danieli’s, Venice Sept. 17, 1935 Dear Strong Venice is very crowded, with German and French steamers bringing crow ds hundreds of tourists; but there is no longer any restaurant at —— Florian’s, all is café, and I doubt that you would find much to please you if you made the journey. And my thoughts, as you know, are turned rather in other directions than the problems of epistemology that you like to discuss, and I am sure you wouldn’t get any fresh light from me on that subject. But I am glad you have found energy and interest to formulate the matter in a new and more satisfactory way, which I suppose will appear before long in m / Mind or in the Journal of Philosophy. You say you have revised your Will, and that you are delighted with Cory’s article. I don’t want to be indiscreet, but this juxtaposition leaves me puzzled as to the decision you may have made about the Fellowship you had intended to establish at Harvard. As you know, I am leaving Cory nothing except my books and manuscripts, which would be a burden rather than an aid to him when I disappear; and perhaps I might make some arrangement to tide him over that crisis, if you have cancelled the — arran— gem— ents provision you were making in his favour. That is why ^ ^ I should rather like to know if you have done so. I have been writing an essay on Berkeley, asked for by Bellamy Dobrée for a book he editing to be entitled From Anne to Victoria. I agreed, because the work fell in nicely with what I was trying to think out about the Realm of Spirit; and I am treating Berkeley entirely in that connection, encouraged by a little book on Berkeley & Malebranche by Canon Luce of Trinity, Dublin. He takes the same view of Berkeley that I do, that he ought to have been a great religious or mystical philosopher, not a step down towards sense-data, Broad, & Russell. Yours ever G.S.
1933–1936
To Constable and Co. Ltd. 19 September 1935 • Venice, Italy TIME OF RECEIPT AT CENTRAL TELEGRAPH OFFICE, E.O.T.
5:237
(MS telegram: Temple)
OFFICE OF ORIGIN.FOREIGN NUMBER.NO OF WORDS.DATE. TIME HANDED IN.AND SERVICE INSTRUCTIONS.
4 40m. IRP FROM PEACH 19/9/35+
281 VENEZIA 9 19 1410=
CONSTABLE E C 10 ORANGE STREET LDN = ONE1 SANTAYANA + 1
This number indicates Santayana’s choice from three designs for the dust jacket for Puritan.
To John Hall Wheelock 22 September 1935 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Venice, Sept. 22, 1935 Dear Mr. Wheelock Today I receive your letter of Sept. 12, after your cablegram,1 and your other note about The Last Puritan Thank you very much for everything. Naturally I am gratified to have this book chosen by the Book-of-theMonth Club, and dazzled by the unexpected prospect of getting $5000 at one swoop. You suggest, perhaps too flatteringly, that the better my books are known the more they will be liked. I am not sure about that; I believe there is a good deal of irritation and contempt in some quarters at the tone of my mind; but perhaps opposition and divided opinions may serve as an added advertisement, and — that we may profit by the zeal of our enemies, if not morally, at least financially. Since you are to reset the book there will be a chance to correct any remaining clerical errors. I have discovered two more since I last wrote,
5:238
The Letters of George Santayana
and list them on the opposite page.2 I suppose your proof-readers will have better eyes than I, and may be trusted to revise the proofs. Yours sincerely GSantayana “The Last Puritan” by G. Santayana Further Errata. Page 234 line 12, insert “to” before “the one side or the other”. Page 351 lines 16 & 17. for “gentlemen” read “gentleman” 1 LAST PURITAN SELECTED BY BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB CONGRATULATIONS MEANS WIDER PUBLIC AND ROYALTY OF FIVETHOUSAND DOLLARS FOR YOU ON THESE COPIES ALONE PROBABLE PUBLICATION HERE DECEMBER OR JANUARY LETTER FOLLOWS, SCRIBNERS. 2 These Constable edition errata were corrected in the Scribner’s edition.
To Charles Augustus Strong 24 September 1935 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Danieli’s, Venice Sept. 24, 1935 Dear Strong Thank you for telling me about the new arrangements you have made in the matter of the Fellowship: my mind is relieved of all anxiety, because Cory has friends—his father, brother,1 and aunt—who would tide him over, even if his wits didn’t suffice to keep him afloat, during a limited interval: the point is that, if he is not successful at once in earning his living, he should not be a pauper all the rest of his life. There will certainly be a good deal about consciousness in my Realm of Spirit. As I k/ now plan the book, the first chapter will be about definitions and the use of terms: and I distinguish carefully the connotation of “consciousness” (the pensée2 of Descartes) from “Spirit”, the latter having a moral bias and a personal history, which mere “consciousness” does not involve: and there is a discussion also of the /“term “mind”, and of the other uses of “Spirit”, not adopted by me. Then in the second chapter
1933–1936
5:239
there will be an account of the origin or genesis of spirit, its basis being the life of the psyche, i.e. physical life; and of the (purely spiritual) originality and novelty of spirit. This seems to touch the points in which you are interested, and yet I am afraid it will not satisfy your questions, because feeling for me is an instance of consciousness, not a basis for consciousness; the basis being large-scale biological processes, having a moral or [illegible ]dramatic character; and it is this moral or dramatic character in material life that I make the ground of consciousness or spirit. Tropes, belonging in the Realm of Truth, intervene between unconscious organic processes and moral or intellectual awakenings: so that an internal substance, like your “sentience”, within spirit, as it were, is neither found nor required. In a word, my notion of the relation of mind to body remains Aristotelian, as it has always been. Spirit is the second (actualized) entelechy of natural organic life in an animal: and the inner texture of substance remains a purely cosmological problem, not involved in psychology except as it may be involved in the evolution of animals. th I expect to remain here until Oct. 15– and then move to Rome for the winter. The N. Y. New Republic calls my preface to Iris’s Leopardi “boring and obese”. What would the critic say if he met me in the flesh? Yours ever G. S. 1
The Reverend David M. Cory was a Congregational minister in Brooklyn, New York. 2 Thought (French).
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 26 September 1935 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Danieli’s, Venice. Sept. 26, 1935 Dear Cory The enclosed letter from Wheelock will explain at first hand what is the state of things in regard to the novel.1 Of course it is gratifying to have this sudden boost, but someone must have it, apparently, every month, and really it’s not extravagant to think that The Last Puritan, which is a major work and original in some respects, should have been chosen to be one of the twelve in one year. [illegible ]What this does show is that the ^ ^ ^^ committee were not too much disturbed by my picture of America or of
5:240
The Letters of George Santayana
erotic friendships: but the critics, some of them, will probably rage. Never mind: we will pocket the $5000 and the rest of the [illegible ]profits with thanks, and go our own way. A tactless friend has sent me a review of Iris’s book, in which my “foreword” is called “boring and obese”. What would the critic say if he saw me in the flesh? And what wrath won’t he pour on The Last Puritan? I asked Edman what he thought people would think, and he said they would scrutinize the Prologue and Epilogue so as to make out how much of myself there was in the book; and he asked whether I had any special intention in saying, at the end of the Prologue, that I would report the facts only in so far as discretion allowed. In other words, they smell a rat, and want to know (very indiscreetly) whether the rat is in me, or only in my book. You will be bothered all your life with questions of this kind, if you become my official interpreter. I think it might be prudent on your part to say that you knew nothing about my private history in my earlier years. It is the truth, as is natural with more than forty years’ difference in our ages; and I think even my contemporaries, if not inventive, would have to say the same thing. The fact is that there is very little to know, except what can be got by psychoanalysis out of my prose and poetry. But this whole interest in an author’s medical history is vile and morbid, and ought to be squelched as severely as possible. It is another question, and legitimate, to like or not to like the sentiments that an author has actually expressed. I am rather sorry that they are to reprint the book in America, making it a little dearer in price and a great deal cheaper in appearance; but we will stick to the British edition which is not unpleasing to the eye; although I should have chosen a different binding. Berkeley is finished and laid aside to cool and to be revised later; and I have returned to the R. of S.2 Yours affly G.S. 1
Unlocated. Realm of Spirit.
2
1933–1936
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 26 September 1935 • Venice, Italy
5:241
(MS postcard: Unknown)
Sept. 26, ’35 I am sending you a book about English School life that has some amusing things in it;1 but it would have been better if the interest had been centred more on one or two characters. However, the minor figures, like the porter at the end, are perhaps the best. G.S. 1
Unidentified.
To Sterling Power Lamprecht 26 September 1935 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Dartmouth)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Venice, Sept. 26, 1935 Dear Mr. Lamprecht Thank you for your letter of Sept. 17 and for the copies of my Hague address. These will still be useful to distribute on occasion, although I believe Obiter Scripta are to appear shortly after all, instead of Edman’s Selections, postponed until next year. These things are disposed by a sort of higher providence or professional soviet, without my knowledge or consent: but usually, I believe, for good reasons which I acquiesce in gladly after the fact. The novel, too, has suddenly been transported to the third heaven of the Book-of-the-Month Club, and I understand that a shower of gold is to fall upon me later from that quarter. Very nice, but how surprising! Yours sincerely GSantayana
5:242
The Letters of George Santayana
To John Hall Wheelock 27 September 1935 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Venice, Sept. 27, 1935 Dear Mr. Wheelock On dipping into The Last Puritan, at a place I hadn’t recently reread, I find three uncorrected errors, rather near together, which I register overleaf. Doubtless I shall find others, and perhaps, when the English edition appears, not all the mistakes previously noted will have been corrected. I should therefore be much obliged if you would let me know the latest date at which errata could be usefully communicated to your printers, and I will then send you a complete list of those I shall have discovered, up to that time, in the English text. I am very sorry that my proof-reading is so blind; but my eyes are not sharp, although still perfectly good for hasty reading; and besides an author, by familiarity with his phrases, is led to anticipate what he reads, and not really to look at the printed words. Hence these strange oversights after several revisions. Yours sincerely GSantayana “The Last Puritan” by G. Santayana Additional Errata.1 p. 380 line 11 from the bottom. for “respectively” read “respectfully.” p. 391 3rd line from the bottom. after “soon” insert “as”. p. 394 th 11– line from the bottom for “its” read “it’s.” 1
The first two are corrected in the Scribner’s but not in the Constable edition. The third is corrected in both.
1933–1936
To George Sturgis 3 October 1935 • Venice, Italy
5:243
(MS: Houghton) Venice, Oct. 3, 1935
Dear George If you are as innocent as I am about the ways of the book-trade, you will be surprised to hear that between 35,000 and 40,000 copies of my novel have been sold before the book has appeared. There seems to be a thing called the Book-of-the-Month Club, that performs this miracle every thirty days for one author or another. Not really so flattering, therefore, that The Last Puritan should have been one of the twelve,/ (and not less than twelves/ —e— very— year ) new books that must sell ^ ^ about 40,000 copies every year ; but it is pleasant to get $5000 at once ^ ^ for the book; Scribner gets another $5,000; and there is likely to be a sale outside the circle of subscribers to the Book-of-the-Month; so that we are ^ ^ to be congratulated, so far, on the success of the book. But you must remember that the twelve apostles were chosen by Christ himself, and one of them was Judas; and though he got thirty pieces of silver, according to contract, it didn’t do his reputation much good with posterity. You may also wonder, as I did, how the committee of this club could choose my book before it was out: but the practice of publishers nowadays seems to be to send advanced proofs to the critics, so that reviews and notices may appear at the time of the publication; and my novel was in print (full of errata) in June last, when I read the first proofs here in Venice: and the New York critics received advanced copies at the same time. Hence these tears, or rather these smiles and these shekels. The $5,000 haven’t been paid yet, and I should be much obliged if you would send $1,000 again to Brown Shipley & Co for my account. This will probably be the last extra draft that I shall have to ask for for some time, if the novel lives up to its present promises. By the way, it is not to appear in America before December or January, and they are going to reprint it. The English edition appears this month. I will send you a copy. Yours affly G.S.
5:244
The Letters of George Santayana
To Otto Kyllmann 12 October 1935 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Address: Hotel Bristol, Rome Venice, Oct. 12, 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann In regard to Dr. Jahn’s communication, which I return, I should certainly agree to his quoting the passages he refers to from the Preface to Scepticism and Animal Faith. Quotation is always a compliment & an advertisement.1 I am returning on the 15th to Rome, where I shall probably be all winter, as usual, at the Hotel Bristol. I am looking forward to receiving there the first copies of The Last Puritan. I am afraid there are still a lot of errors (some the printers’, but most of them mine) which have remained undetected. I have a list of them which I will complete and send to you, in view of possible reprints, as soon as I have had a chance to examine the final text. I shall also send this list to Scribner, seeing that under the changed circumstances they are going to print a separate edition. My eyes are not very sharp, and an author is a bad proof-reader in any case, because he sees what ought to be there before he looks. I am sorry, but I had no one at hand to help me in correcting the proofs. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Aegidius Jahn wrote The Silver World: An Essay on the Ultimate Problems of Philosophy (London: G. Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1937). Jahn quotes from several of Santayana’s works in the notes to the introduction to his book on pages 36 and 37.
To George Sturgis 14 October 1935 • Venice, Italy
(MS: Houghton) Oct. 14, 1935
HÔTEL ROYAL DANIELI VENEZIA
Dear George I see by the papers that in the proposed “sanctions” against Italy there is talk of prohibiting all payments to people resident here. Will this pre-
1933–1936
5:245
vent me from drawing money on Brown Shipley? If so, you might make some other arrangement, sending me drafts direct, perhaps, or through the American Express Co which has an office in Rome. When you get this, you may know, better than I do k/ now, what these mad people at Geneva have actually set about;1 and you can make inquiries as to the simplest way of letting me have my regular money. You know that about $500 a month is what I require. I go to Rome tomorrow, and have several thousand lire, so that I am all right for the moment, especially as the Hotel Bristol would trust me, I expect, for as long as necessary. Yours affly G.S. 1 Founded in 1919 at the Paris Peace Conference and headquartered in Geneva, the League of Nations was an assembly composed of England, France, Italy, Japan, Germany, and the USSR. It provided for treaties mandating a system of colonial administration, international cooperation in labor, and humanitarian enterprises. On 3 October 1935 Mussolini’s army invaded Ethiopia (Abyssinia). The Italian Fascists wanted to make Ethiopia part of the Italian colonial empire. This invasion was a crucial development in the events leading to World War II because it brought the Nazis and Italian Fascists into close accord. On 4 October 1935 the council of the League of Nations imposed economic sanctions on Italy for this aggression.
To Otto Kyllmann 17 October 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 17. 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann On arriving here yesterday I found the two copies of The Last Puritan, which you had kindly had sent to me, according to my request. I have compared the text with my proofs, and find that the worst missprints that had escaped correction before have been detected and set right by your proof-reader. There remain a few, most of them trivial, which I note on the enclosed sheet,1 in case of a future reprint. I like the general aspect of the book and especially its lightness in the hand, really admirable for so long a work. The reader will hardly be made to feel that he is reading a treatise. Yours sincerely GSantayana
5:246
The Letters of George Santayana
P.S. In regard to the other three copies that I understand I am to receive, will you kindly have to/wo sent to me here, at the Hotel Bristol, Rome, and the third to Mr. George Sturgis, 1, Federal Street. Boston, Mass. U.S.A. 1
Though Santayana’s errata sheet has not been located, a memorandum for a Miss Beam contains a list of eight corrections. These corrections were made in the Scribner’s edition.
To John Hall Wheelock 17 October 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 17, 1935 Dear Mr. Wheelock On reaching Rome yesterday I found the first copies of The Last Puritan in the English edition. I have compared the text with my proofs and, as far as I know, the missprints noted on the enclosed sheet are all that remain. Some of them are obvious and would no doubt be corrected by your printers in any case, but I list everything I have discovered, for greater safety. Yours sincerely GSantayana The Last Puritan by G. Santayana Errata remaining in the English edition Page 85
line th
6 from the bottom
for
read
father
Father
169
2
1906
1907
208
6
let’s
lets
330
18
*380
th –
11– from the bottom
insert comma after “staggering” respectively
respectfully
1933–1936
*391
3rd from the bottom
428
8
509
6 nd –
5:247
insert as after “soon” geographically
geographical
shadows
shadow splendidly
627
2– from the bottom
spendidly
632
10
(after “belongs)
?
* These corrections have already been sent by the author to Messrs. Scribner.
To Ellen Shaw Barlow 19 October 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct, 19, 1935 Dear “Cousin Nellie” It was most kind of you to send me this message, which takes me back to the pleasantly foolish days when Bob was a very young man and I thought myself only a little older. It is now 23 years since I left America, and I have lost the thread of most of those affectionate friendships which I had there. I console myself with thinking that life would have divided us in any case in all that really matters, and that perhaps a complete break helps to preserve the memory of one’s halcyon days purer than if it had been confused by gradual drifting apart or material impediments. I don’t know what I may have said that misrepresented my mother’s it, relations with the Sturgis family. I am sure she had a real “culte”1 for — them, especially for your mother2 and for “Uncle Russell” and “Uncle Robert”.3 Their characters, their persons, and their way of living were what she thought absolutely right and superior to anything to be found elsewhere. She especially despised, in comparison, Spanish ways and Spanish ideas. That is why I have never been able to make out why she ever married my father. But there were probably strands in her character and experience which I had no notion of, having known her only in her old age, when she was very silent and led a retired resigned and monotonous life. Family history, and even one’s own past, are hard to decipher unless you have documents to go by. It is like deciphering the Roman
5:248
The Letters of George Santayana
Forum. There are the stones, perfectly plain; but they belong to different strata and it is impossible to piece — out anything out of them that shall correspond to what existed at any one time. The reason you say my mother gave for Susie’s not staying in the Convent—that Susie liked meat and not vegetables—is most characteristic of my Mother. She believed in dialectical materialism before anyone had heard of Karl Marx. And if we take that saying symbolically, I think it was most true, because religion with Susie was a social passion, not a spiritual one, and in her enthusiasms there wasn’t very much peace. She was certainly not made to be a nun; but she was driven to make that experiment by dissatisfaction with her surroundings after the fun of first youth was gone. I am writing separately to Bob, and will add nothing here, except to say “thank you” [across ] again for your kind letter Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Respect (French). Mrs. Francis (Sarah Blake Sturgis) Shaw. 3 Russell Sturgis (1805–87) and Robert Shaw Sturgis (1824–76) were brothers of George Sturgis, Santayana’s mother’s first husband. Russell married three times. In 1858 Robert married Susan Brimmer Inches (d. 1900). 2
To Robert Shaw Barlow 19 October 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 19, 1935 Dear Bob It is indeed a pleasant surprise to hear from you and even more from your mother. I didn’t even know that you were living together in Boston, my news of the family history, in spite of a constant correspondence with George Sturgis, being very scanty. I knew that he went often to the Bangs’s, and sometimes saw you there; but until I informed him of the fact, he seems not to have known that you and he were cousins. Boylston Beal is the only one of the old gang that I ever see nowadays, and he gives me melancholy accounts of the state of things in America, social, moral, and financial. I don’t think I should care much for the new generations, in spite of my liking for mere youth: but it must be simple youth, not getold-quick standardized immaturity. You will see in my novel—the English edition is out, but the American is not to appear until December or
1933–1936
5:249
January—some sketches of what, as I now imagine it, youth was in your day: in your day rather than in my own, because, as you will see, my leading personages are not drawn from my own experience but rather from what I fancied to have been potential in my friends. Everybody who is in the know at all will recognize some of my originals. I could easily name several of our friends who have contributed something to my hero: but perhaps it will amuse you and Swelly Bangs to analyse the compound for yourselves. The ladies are also renderings of certain sides of people who have counted a good deal in my life: but the setting is so transformed that perhaps the likeness is rather an intention in me than a reality. “Rose”, for instance, is a picture of what I imagine my mother to have been like when a young girl. I don’t remember how much I said in that sketch of her life about her romantic adventures when all alone among the Indians in her tropical island:1 but she had a wonderful coolness and courage, and a quiet disdain for what she didn’t feel was quite up to the mark. For that reason she wasn’t very affectionate to her children: we were poor stuff. Naturally, we are living under a war-cloud: but I hope it won’t burst. My sympathies are anti-English now: gradually, since the war, all my Anglomania has faded away. The British bully is traditional, and the English prig is familiar: but the two were never before so well combined as in Mr. Eden.2 I prefer the Bolschies; and perhaps everywhere, through one approach or another, it is to State socialism that we are bound I am tempted to send you and Bangs (since you discuss [across ] me) a little autobiography and a lay sermon of mine. They have appeared or willappear in books,but perhaps a pamphlet is less rébarbatif.3 Yours ever G. S. 1
The island of Batang, in the Philippines, where Josefina Borrás lived for a time after the death of her father in about 1847. See Persons, 35–36. 2 Robert Anthony Eden (1897–1977) was British foreign minister from 1935 to 1938. A staunch supporter of the League of Nations (1934–35), he resigned in opposition to the “appeasement” of the Axis. He again served as foreign minister in Churchill’s war cabinet (1940–45) during the alliance of Great Britain, the USSR, and the United States, and the building of the United Nations. Knighted in 1954, he became prime minister in 1955. 3 Forbidding (French).
5:250
The Letters of George Santayana
To Otto Kyllmann 22 October 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 22, 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann In regard to the Canadian edition of The Last Puritan and the Bookof-the-Month Club any arrangement that you think suitable will satisfy me. I abandon all hope of understanding the mysteries of the book-trade in the U.S. but I bow piously to its dispensations, at least in this case, since I understand I am to receive 5,000 dollars in a lump to begin with, which is much more than I had expected in the end I don’t subscribe to the Press-Cutting agencies, preferring to let my consciousness of my books fade naturally into the past; but I have seen the Times review and one other (both sent to me by these Press-Cutting Bureaus, as advertisements)1 and I quite understand the tendencies —y of the criticisms to be, as you say, “muffled”. They don’t like to venture on dangerous ground, or to risk an opinion about a book that doesn’t quite fall into the usual categories. Both these reviews were rather favourable; yet neither of them mentioned humour, as you were kind (and perceptive) enough to do in your note printed on the jacket.2 To me the humour, the fun, makes the soul of any description of human society that can be read for pleasure. If people don’t hear the scherzo in the symphony, no wonder they find the andante tedious and long.3 Somebody some day will probably attack this book furiously on moral and religious grounds, but for the moment the critics seem to be benevolent, or else shy. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Early reviews appeared in theTimes Literary Supplement ([17 October 1935]: 646), the New Statesman and Nation (10 [1935]: 886, by Robert Gathorne-Hardy), and Scrutiny (4 [1935]: 320–28, by Q. D. Leavis). 2 The jacket reads in part: “No summary of its incidents can possibly suggest the qualities of The Last Puritan—the humour, the exquisite urbanity, the grace of a perfect prose and that stimulus which comes from contact with a mind of rare subtlety and distinction.” 3 A scherzo is a humorous instrumental musical composition that is commonly in quick triple time. Andante is a musical term for moderately slow (Italian).
1933–1936
To Charles Augustus Strong 23 October 1935 • Rome, Italy
5:251
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 23, 1935 Dear Strong It is too bad that you should be suffering from these painful little ailments, and I hope the change to Cannes will relieve them. In any case, there will be no dearth of doctors there, and perhaps of acquaintances that may help you to pass away the time. Elizabeth, for instance. In Venice, this last time, I had nothing to read except St. John of the Cross, which is not suitable for restaurants and cafés, and I had to take refuge in Tauchnitz novels. Among them I happened upon “Love”, by Elizabeth.1 I think I had read, at least a part of it, before, but it had all the charm of novelty, thanks to a bad memory. The heroine is even more like herself than her usual heroine is; except that she has never had to give up looking young. Cannes may also be a relief to you politically, if the condition of things in Italy now makes you uncomfortable. I am troubled, of course, but interested, and in full sympathy with this side of the quarrel. Not that, being a Pantoffelheld2 (if that is the way to spell it) I didn’t deprecate the expedition to Ethiopia and feel in my bones that it might be a disaster; but that, once human life and human enterprise are condoned, I see the whole élan vital of the universe behind our friends here: whereas I loathe the League of Nations. To bolster up the decay of parlaimentarism by convoking a still bigger and more mob-like parlaiment, composed of pedants and ideologues, was a work worthy of Wilson, Clemenceau, & Lloyd George:3 and now to see it run by Eden reminds me of Eliot running the Harvard Faculty.4 What an odious tyrant he is! The English bully is traditional and the English prig is familiar; but the union of the two was never achieved before Mr. Anthony Eden. With these sentiments, I don’t mind waiting for events in this heated atmosphere: we may soon see clearer weather, and I am not sure that this egregious Mr. Eden will not disappear ignominiously from the scene. I hope this sfogo5 of mine won’t irritate you, if you sympathize with the other side. I might tear up this letter, and write a colourless one; but perhaps it may entertain you to see how anti-English I have become Yours ever G.S.
5:252
The Letters of George Santayana
1
Love was first published in 1925 by Doubleday, Page & Co. Big talker (German). 3 [Thomas] Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) served as president of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910. In 1912 he was elected twenty-eighth president of the United States. George Clemenceau (1841–1929) was the great political leader of France through World War I. David Lloyd George (1863–1945), a liberal anti-imperialist member of Parliament for fifty-four years, opposed the appeasement policy after World War I. These three leaders basically set the terms of the Versailles peace treaty. 4 Charles William Eliot (1834–1926) began teaching at Harvard following his 1853 graduation. After study in Europe, he became a chemistry professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1865. He was appointed president of Harvard in 1869. By 1909, at the end of his tenure, Harvard had become one of the great universities of the world. Characteristic of his curricular reform was advocacy of the elective system and abolition of a required curriculum. Santayana viewed Eliot’s reform program as a movement away from traditional liberal education toward mere “preparation for professional life” and “service in the world of business” (Persons, 396). 5 Outburst (Italian). 2
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 26 October 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 26, 1935 Dear Cory Two press-cutting agencies have sent me, as an ad, two reviews of The Last Puritan, one from The Times. They were rather good; but I don’t think I care to see any more. Better let the subject drop out of my mind as far as possible. Occasionally I reopen my copy and find a new miss/ print somewhere; but I am tired of the book, and don’t need it for entertainment. The Abyssinian imbroglio is enough. The atmosphere here is very cheerful and exhilarating. It is so much more healthy to go in for an adventure, even a perilous one, than to sit up all night quarrelling and shaking with fear and devising ways of preventing other people from doing anything. France is afraid of Germany: but what is England afraid of, that it need hide behind France or the other 50 weaklings in the League? Germany too,/? o/ Or merely time and her own lassitude? Curious that the English, who are so good at adventures themselves, and at the handling of matter, should lose all contact with reality the moment they try to think. I read the ir speeches in the papers. Except Lloyd George’s, ^ ^ they seem to be the speeches of nice decent people: but all whimsical, inspired by some slogan, lost in a maze. What the French say is all false
1933–1936
5:253
too, more consciously false than the English stuff; but then one doesn’t expect sincerity in politicians who have to stand for election every few years. My subscription to the Morning Post expires next month and I am not going to renew it; but I don’t think I want The Weekly Times or literary supplement either. I have had enough; and I can pick up a number now and then, if something exceptional occurs. To return to the novel, I have been awaiting letters from the friends I sent it too/ , but none of any interest has yet arrived. If you see any criticism that seems penetrating, and not merely perfunctory, I should like to read it, because it looks as if the book might be dismissed as a rather overloaded prosy story, and not regarded as a “criticism of life”. When am I to see Michael? Couldn’t you send me Part I on thin paper? I will ponder it, and return it. Yours affly G.S.
To George Sturgis 28 October 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton) Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 28, 1935
Dear George I note your change of address. A copy of the English edition of The Last Puritan (addressed, of course, to 1 Federal Street) will have reached you by this time. If you read it (skipping without any qualms when the soliloquies bore you) you will see that it doesn’t lend itself to the cinema. Nevertheless the matter has already been broached, and Scribner has the cinema rights in hand, as my agent. I believe he said I should get 85% of the profits, if any, and he 15%. But there is no chance, I think, in that quarter, unless someone should rewrite all the last part and make it dramatic. There are several occasions where I have deliberately avoided obvious complications in the action. Tom Piper might actually have prevented Oliver’s marriage to Edith;1 the dropped letter business would then have more point: and later Mario might really run away with Rose, and leave Oliver doubly insulted and forlorn. But I haven’t enough familiarity with melodrama to work such plots out properly, and besides, I wished to keep the tragedy muffled and going on only in the realm of possibilities and frustrations behind the scenes. The lost letter business doesn’t make any difference: that is the point I wish the reflective reader to see: and Mario
5:254
The Letters of George Santayana
wouldn’t have snatched Rose away from Oliver for worlds, caring much more for him than for her. So that her caprices in the matter are wasted also. That is a more cynical and pessimistic effect; also a nobler one, if you catch it at all. And I am much encouraged about “putting over” my intentions. People don’t miss them. This morning, together with your letter, I receive one from Lady Russell (Elizabeth of the German Garden) who has recognized her late husband in my Lord Jim!2 Nobody else will, I hope and expect: and the likeness is not intentional or external; but it is the same man really, and it is a triumph that his wife should see it at once. But these psychological mysteries won’t go on the screen. Thank you for sending the $1000 to London. I don’t expect any serious trouble with England or with “sanctions”, : Europe is too divided and too ^ ^ much scared. Yours affly G.S. 1
Edith Van de Weyer. John Francis Stanley, second earl Russell (1865–1931), was the grandson and heir of Lord John Russell, the reforming prime minister; son of Lord and Lady Amberley; and elder brother of Bertrand Russell. Jim Darnley, captain of the Black Swan, was based mainly on John Francis Stanley Russell. 2
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 31 October 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 31, 1935 Dear Cory The letters I was waiting for about The Last Puritan have begun to arrive. Last night came a very nice one from Logan Pearsall Smith, enclosing Desmond MacCarthy’s review in last Sunday’s Times.1 I assume you have seen it. The important point is the intensity with which he feels the book, so much so as to complain that I make too much of Mario, as if these characters were real people. He is right, of course, about Oliver sometimes speaking with my voice: but — he Oli ver was my pupil, ^ ^ I might have suggested these very words to him, and in any case he had seen round his own puritanism from the beginning and felt it was wrong. So that his occasional power of self-criticism, without power of self-correction, is not out of character: although very likely it was not always this fact that made me write those passages, but simply incapity not to air my own ideas.
1933–1936
5:255
Logan, for his part, if very complimentary, “You have displayed new powers of humour and irony and of the presentation of characters . . All the few people I know in London with any sense of quality are reading The Last Puritan with passionate admiration, and, to borrow a phrase of Henry James’s, ‘the small fry of the day submit to a further shrinkage’.”2 But the best letter so far is from Lady Russell. She writes: “I have got to the part where Oliver goes on the Black Swan and meets Lord Jim, whose person and conversation seem curiously familiar.” This is splendid: because Jim isn’t externally like my friend her husband, nor in his specific opinions: but it is the same man, the same psyche; and that Elizabeth should have seen it at once gives me the greatest joy. And I am sure she will be even more reminded of her lost illusions—for she must have been in love with him, else why marry him?—(and that when he was nearly fifty!)—when she comes to his gradual deterioration; and I do hope, though I doubt, that she will soften toward him at the end. She didn’t in real life, even when he became a member of the Labour Government. I tell you this because I feel we are Santayana & Cory, Incorporated (not, I hope, Limited) and I want you to see these things from the inside. Here is a real justification for the motto from Alain about “jeunesse sauvée”.3 Lord Jim is a bit of my youth preserved. I am much more partial to him than to Mario, who is a compound of several other friends of mine, all less important. Elizabeth also says: “The Fräulein’s letters are so good, so ganz Deutsch,4 that I believe you must have read them over her shoulder. I too know a Fräulein like that—indeed she is, oddly, my most intimate woman friend. The same enthusiasm and ecstasy about everything, the same eloquence over scenery and sunsets, the same determination im Wahren Guten Schönen resolut zu leben, without, I think, being very clear as to what is wahr, gut, and schön.5 Happy are they who possess this kind of celestial flatulence”. Isn’t “celestial flatulence” good? Elizabeth once spoke of my “verklär te Heiterkeit”, which is even better, if you feel the quality of those two German words. “Transfigured merriment” is the nearest I can come to it in English. I am expecting a letter some day from Westenholz, my German friend; then from Mrs. Toy and Boylston Beal in America. That will complete the list of my intimates, whose response matters to me on personal grounds — Yours affly G.S.
5:256
The Letters of George Santayana
1
The review has not been located. Unidentified. 3 Puritan carries as a motto: “On dit bien que l’expérience parle par la bouche des hommes d’âge: mais la meilleure expérience qu’ils puissent nous apporter est celle de leur jeunesse sauvée.” (It is well said that experience speaks through the mouth of older men: but the best experience that they can bring to us is that of their salvaged youth.) 4 Completely German. 5 To live with determination in the true, good, and beautiful (German). 2
To George Sturgis 2 November 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 2, 1935 Dear George Will you kindly make good the assertion in the enclosed blue slip,1 and send the cheque as requested to Merriam, but made out to Hood.2 You might also add that I am sorry I can’t be present. I enclose the best review of the novel that I have seen so far.3 Desmond MacCarthy is a promime —nent editor and critic, and you see how seriously he takes the book. All the first part about “essences” is fudge and can be neglected. He has got “snarled up” about that innocent word, which only means what people (not philosophers!) call an idea. Yours affly G.S. 1
Not with the original letter at the Houghton Library. John McKinstry Merriam (b. 1862) and Frederic Clark Hood were members of Santayana’s Harvard class of 1886. Merriam was class secretary and wrote the forward to The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Class of ’86 and the Three Hundredth of the College. 3 Not with the original letter at the Houghton Library. 2
1933–1936
To George Sturgis 12 November 1935 • Rome, Italy
5:257
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 12, 1935 Dear George Yesterday I drew $500 without difficulty at Cook’s, and, as you say, there does not seem to be any likelihood of obstacles being placed in the way of cashing letters of credit on the U.S. As to my London bank-account, I never draw cheques on it for my expenses here, but only for books to be sent from England, and for presents or charities out of Italy. I don’t think a cheque on London to be paid in England or France or Spain would be stopped by the Italian post-office, as nothing is thereby removed from Italy. Even if this should happen, it wouldn’t be difficult to find a way of securing the same object—perhaps by asking Brown Shipley & Co to send a draft to the person in question from London. I am perfectly ready to suspend tea-drinking, wearing English boots, or getting books from England while the sanctions are on: in case of anything very interesting, I can order it by way of America. The atmosphere here is tense but exhilarating, and I was never more pleased at living in Italy than at this moment. It is a glorious experience, and I shouldn’t wonder if tightening the belt (especially in regard to luxuries and foreign products) would have an admirable effect on the Italian people, already so much sterner and more energetic than they were, or ^ ^ than we used to think them. Yours affly G.S.
To Otto Kyllmann 14 November 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 14, 1935 Dear Mr. Kyllmann No: there is no French translation of The Life of Reason. The only one of my books that has been translated, both into French and Italian, is Egotism in German Philosophy. The French translation,
5:258
The Letters of George Santayana
entitled L’Erreur de la Philosophie Allemande was published by the “Nouvelle Librairie Nationale” 11, rue de Médicis, Paris, in 1917. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To John Hall Wheelock 16 November 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 16, 1935 Dear Mr. Wheelock I am sending you my two last photographs, one taken about the age of 60 (probably the one you already have) and the other about the age of 70, or more exactly in 1923 and in 1932. The photographs/ers in ^ London have the negatives, if there is any advantage in reproducing ^ from them rather than from the finished copies. I send you both because The Last Puritan being the work of a life-time, the one represents the author just as truly as the other—sub specie aeternitatis1—and even an earlier one might do so eventually, when he has no longer any actual age. There is no decent portrait of me before these two until we go back to the year 1896, when Andreas Andersen (have you ever heard of him? He was a brother of Hendrik Andersen, the excentric sculptor, and a great friend of that other impressionist painter, my friend Howard Cushing) made a charcoal drawing which I think admirable psychologically as well as pictorially.2 I have only one photograph of the original, which latter I believe is in Hendrik Andersen’s possession, but I could send it to you provisionally, if you were interested in having it reproduced for some future occasion. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
In its essential or universal form or nature. (Literally “under the aspect of eternity” [Latin].) 2 Andreas Martin Andersen (1869–1902) sketched Santayana’s favorite portrait of himself. In November 1939 Santayana wrote on a print of this portrait: “Done in charcoal by the firelight in No 7, Stoughton Hall, in the Harvard Yard, where I lived as proctor, from 1890 to 1896. The artist, a young Norwegian who had studied in Paris, was cut off by an early death from a promising career.” Hendrik Christian Andersen (1872–1940) sculpted large representational figures. In the introduction to his edition of Henry James’s letters, Leon Edel speaks of the friendship between the young sculp-
1933–1936
5:259
tor and the elderly novelist, describing Hendrik as “the sculptor James loved in so troubled a way …”. Henry James: Letters, vol. I (Harvard University Press, 1974), xxiii. Howard Gardiner Cushing (1869–1916), Harvard class of 1891, became a professional painter. Cushing’s sister, Olivia, married Andreas Andersen in the last year of Andersen’s life. The original of the charcoal portrait is in the Houghton Library at Harvard University.
To Charles Augustus Strong 21 November 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 21, 1935 Dear Strong I was glad to see the other day that you had got safely to Cannes. Thank you for the French Academy speeches. I will write about them another day. Today, I receive your letter about the novel. Naturally it pleases (and relieves) me that you should find it so solid, and that you like Oliver, whom most critics seem to find too pale and dull and long-winded. Perhaps my Begriff1 of puritanism isn’t very clear: but Oliver’s puritanism was explicitly a heritage, a burden that he couldn’t shake off, not a personal free conviction. “Niceness” he could have kept, without being “balled up”. and “petering out”. These latter I consider pathological impediments, of which I try to give the origin and complications. His mind wasn’t puritanical: yet he couldn’t become a healthily pagan, like ^^ Goethe. He had also a non-puritan ascetic spiritual side: but he never could understand or accept the logic of that, as known, but not explained, by Mr. Darnley. Oliver isn’t any one of my friends but a composite photograph of several of them, most of whom you have hardly heard of. Here is a partial list. School ^ friends ^
Bentley Warren—Willians —ms College 2 Edward Bayley —the religious side Cameron Forbes3—a great many Younger traits & circumstances ^ friends. Guy Murchie—Provincialism & virtue ^ Lawrence Butler4—Singing. (These two also athletics.) Forbes & Butler also simplicity in wealth. ^ ^
{
{
5:260
The Letters of George Santayana
The most flattering recognition of a character has come to me from Elizabeth. She writes: “I have got to the part where Oliver goes on the Black Swan and meets Lord Jim—whose person and conversation seem curiously familiar”. I prize that especially because it is only the inner man, the psyche, that is her late husband’s in Jim, not the views nor the outer circumstances. Of course there is also similarity in — the being under a cloud. Russell would have made a splendid naval man if his people, being anti-militarists, hadn’t shut that possibility out from the first. Elizabeth is very nice also about Irma: “The Fräulein’s letters are so good, so ganz deutsch5 that I believe you must have read them over her shoulder . . . . Enthusiasm over almost everything, . . eloquence over scenery and sunsets . . determination im Wahren, Guten, Schönen resolut zu leben,6 without, I think, being very clear as to what is wahr, gut, & schön.”7 Isn’t that capital! More than one person says (and the American criticisms having yet materialized, as the book won’t come out there until January) that my novel is like The Way of All Flesh.8 I have just got the book from England, a 2 shilling edition, and mean to read it (for the first time) when there is sunshine on the Pincio. Yours ever G.S. 1
Conception (German). Edward Bancroft Bayley (1864–1936) graduated from English High School in 1882 and became a Boston merchant. See Persons, 175–78. 3 William Cameron “Cam” Forbes (1870–1959) coached the Harvard football team and was a member of the Harvard class of 1892. An administrator and diplomat, he served as United States governor of the Philippine Islands (1909–13) and as United States ambassador to Japan (1930–32). He was the grandson of Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Murray Forbes. 4 Santayana met Lawrence Smith Butler (1875–1954) during an Atlantic crossing in June 1895. After graduation from Harvard in 1898, Butler studied at the Beaux Arts. A nephew of Stanford White, he too became an architect. He cultivated his fine tenor voice, studying with Jean de Reszke in Paris. But, like poor Oliver Alden [of Puritan], he could only sing what he felt and, hence, failed to become an artist vocally. See Persons, 381–82. 5 Totally German. 6 To live resolutely in the truth, good, and beauty (German). 7 True, good, and beautiful. 8 Samuel Butler (1835–1902) wrote The Way of All Flesh (London: Grant Richards, 1903). This novel is a satirical criticism of middle-class English family life. 2
1933–1936
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 25 November 1935 • Rome, Italy
5:261
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome, Nov. 25. 1935 Dear Cory I send you £5 extra this month as the rest of your Christmas present, which may come in conveniently for your London trip. I should be glad to hear your great Gielgud in Romeo, but should I like to see him? Romeo ought to be an Italian. Splendid that you should be so taken with reading Bergson. He is the most distinguished and influential of living writers on philosophy, and it would have been a shame if you hadn’t taken him more or less to heart. A part of his excellence, however, is due to writing in French. When you read other good French authors (as it will be easier for you to do now) you will see that they all know how to present their ideas in a clear, engaging, reasonable way that makes them seem almost self-evident. As to Bertie’s gibe about being fed by remembering your last square meal, I agree that it is well founded, but it hits all identification of ideas with their objects, and not especially Bergson’s identification of a memory with the fact remembered. The absurdity lies in supposing that being fed = the sensation of being fed. Memory might recover the sensation completely, it might become a dream of gorging; but nothing would meantime be dropping into your stomach, and your hectic dream itself wouldn’t last long. I am reading “The Way of All Flesh”, because they say—it is like “the Last Puritan”, or rather vice versa. It is most entertaining, and I have to laugh aloud like a lunatic. “Inspiration” will come in into the Realm of Spirit. For the moment I have dropped back to the Realm of Truth, finding that I needed to work out the relation of truth to determination of events, especially of futures, before I could make clear the sort of “freedom” that is inherent in spirit. Perhaps the two books will be finished together, if they are ever finished. I am hopeful about it now, as I feel very well, and have found a nice Italian doctor, Luigi Sabbatucci,1 who gives me injections doubly strong. “Strong” reminds me of the letter I enclose which you needn’t return.2 Yours affly G.S.
5:262
The Letters of George Santayana
1 Sabbatucci was Santayana’s Jewish physician in Rome from 1935 to 1952. His injections were to prevent colds and recurrent attacks of catarrh or bronchitis. 2 Unlocated.
To Llewelyn Powys 30 November 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Beinecke)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, S.W.1 Rome, Nov. 30, 1935 1
Dear Mr. Powys I wonder by what affinity I should come to be associated in your mind with such a galaxy of notables. It is not only an honour but a pleasant honour, as so many honours are not. Of course, you needed no authorization on my part, but I am grateful for being told, and shall be on the watch for your book,2 in order to discover, if possible, how I have come to be in such good company Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Llewelyn Powys (1884–1939) was an English essayist and journalist educated at Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge. He was married to Alyse Gregory, managing editor of The Dial. 2 Rats in the Sacristy (London: Watts & Co., 1937), which Powys dedicated to Santayana, is most likely the work referred to in this letter. “Amongst these philosophers, extending from Epicurus to Santayana, Thomas Hobbes holds an important place” (201). Powys also wrote Damnable Opinions (London: Watts & Co., 1935) and Dorset Essays (London: John Lane, 1935).
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 6 December 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Rome, Dec. 6, 1935 Dear Cory, I write in pencil because I am stretched out in my chaise-longue, having had an ill turn this morning, like one I had last year, a sort of sudden stoppage and dizziness, which seems to come from a weak heart, and indirectly, perhaps, from a touch of indigestion. It is alarming for the moment, but seems to right itself easily. I have a nice Italian doctor who
1933–1936
5:263
understands English, Dott Sabbatucci, and seems intelligent. He had already given me injections against colds, and I have so far had no bronchial trouble at all, in spite of much rainy weather. Now for the question of your going to see Strong at Cannes. Long ago (I think it was in the early Summer, when I refused to try staying again at Fiesole) I suggested to S. that you might be willing to join him, and that to me it made no difference whether you were in England or wherever S. might himself be. I hope this wasn’t a tactless suggestion on my part. You mustn’t act upon it, if it disarranges your plans. I was only a little sorry for S.’s loneliness and desire to have somebody to whom to explain his fresh convictions on the old points. If you would like to take the trip and give him this satisfaction, of course I will pay your travelling expenses. I haven’t yet received my yearly account, but George Sturgis says it will be very favourable, and in any case I count on the Book-Club. My health and the political situation might conceivably make it advisable in the future for me either to go to the Riviera (why not to Cannes, too?) or to ask you to come and join me here. I hope the latter will not be necessary; but if I found I was permanently or dangerously ill, it would be my first desire to see you, and to straighten out money-matters between us, in case of my demise. I don’t say this because I am very ill now: I am having my tea very comfortably: but the possibility of illness and death is never far removed at my age, and everything is not quite as well arranged in my case as in that of old Peter Alden. At any rate, I had thought of going next summer to Paris, and thence perhaps to some French watering-place, where you might have joined me for a time: but if the war-clouds thicken, I might go earlier to Cannes, and if you were there, we could afterwards move to Paris in company. S. too thinks of going to Saint Germain in the summer, but would first, I suppose, return to Fiesole for a season. In the reviews I have seen of the novel there are objections repeated ly made to Mario, but not a breath against the ambiguities of ^ ^ Jim. Don’t people catch on, or are they shy? Your interest in Spencer & Bergson is an excellent thing, but as yet you don’t seem to me to see them steadily and to see them whole, nor the relation between them, or between Spencer’s agnosticism and my scepticism—Spencer, Bergson, and I agree in not being phenomenalists, in having a motive power behind the moving-picture. Spencer and I further agree in thinking of this power as cosmic, and as internal to the natural
5:264
The Letters of George Santayana
processes observable in space and time: so that he is really as much a materialist as I am, although he thought it up to date to hide behind Dean Mansel, Sir Wm Hamilton,1 and the nebulous Kant, and talk of the Unconditioned. But Bergson’s power behind the scenes is quite different, because it is only biological. The animals on the earth’s surface must somehow have excreted the earth, and the earth, I suppose, excreted the sun and all the constellations. That is why space is such an unpleasant thing for Bergson to consider. His élan vital, in so far as it is a fresh notion, is biological: but in so far as it is an animal psyche animating the whole universe at once, it is only a new name for the anima mundi2 of the ancients, or the Idea of Hegel, or even more closely, the “Spirit” of Schelling3 or Emerson. I don’t agree with you that it marks any memorable step in the history of philosophy. Bergson is as bad in cosmology as Spencer (whose “laws” are verbal only); but he is a very subtle literary psychologist, and infinitely more refined & circumspect than Spencer. On the other hand he is less healthy and honest in his spirit, and covers up his enormities (like the world made of “images” and the rest of his neorealism) with judicious silence or “vital growth and advance to fresh problems”. In your letter to Strong you say—some things about my position which I do not exactly recognize. Thought, feeling, intuition, and instances of spirit generally, are certainly not objects anybody can run up against and perceive: they are immaterial and therefore cannot act upon one another. Nor can a thought as a whole act upon itself as a whole, and be posited by itself as an exitence: but this happens in memory when past feelings are recalled and posited as past. Yet there is no difficulty in describing the essence of thought or spirit (other than stupidity or lack of fit words). The description may be less clear than the mere name “feeling”, “thought” or “consciousness”; but such a fact has a generic essence; it is a spiritual light, a moral actuality, an event having an intrinsic intensity. It feels what we say it feels; but it doesn’t feel our reflective (and perhaps true) description of its spiritual essence. Yours affly G.S. 1
Henry Longueville Mansel (1820–71), an English philosopher, became professor of moral and metaphysical philosophy at Oxford University and later dean of St. Paul’s. Mansel was influenced by French and Scottish philosophers. He authored several works. Sir William Hamilton (1788–1856), a Scottish philosopher, revived the Scottish “Common Sense” school of metaphysics. 2 Life, or soul, of the world (Latin).
1933–1936
5:265
3 Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854), the German philosopher who held that nature and mind cannot be separated, argued that God takes part in the development that is history and holds the limiting factors that define personality.
To George Sturgis 10 December 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Dec. 10, 1935 Dear George You have probably now received a second copy of the novel, which I had sent to you when the first seemed to have gone astray. You will also get a third, when the American edition appears, on Feb. 1st, for they have again put off the publication, & also, naturally, the payment. You say my account for the year is likely to be favourable, so that with the addition of $5000 from the Book-Club, and probably something considerable from the publishers apart from that (since the novel seems to be well received) I shall have a fat year. This, combined with the fact that I am confined to my rooms with a bad heart—not alarming to me, as I feel very well, but still a warning of possible trouble, and of a not unlikely sudden end—turns my thoughts to the fact that I am not satisfied with my testamentary arrangements, apart from the trust which covers the bulk of my property. That is all right: but there are still odds and ends not provided for, as well as persons left without any bequests, when I feel I ought to mbercollect, I have remembered them. Some time ago, as you may reme —— wrote out a sort of will,1 which even if not legal would serve you as a guide in carrying out my wishes, at least if you didn’t disapprove of them: for we are in a curious position: you are the rich uncle holding the pursestrings, and I am the gallivanting nephew drawing large sums, and perhaps making you shake your head and murmur something about these spend-thrift young bachelors. Well, that private document is now out of date. The house in Avila, as you know, is no longer mine;2 I haven’t enough money in the bank in London for the bequests to Mrs. Toy and to Onderdonk which I then wished to make: and I am not sure now that I wish to make them. On the other hand, I am unhappy at the thought that, if I should die soon, I should be leaving nothing to Mercedes or to Cory. The reason is that I counted on surviving Mercedes, who is, I think, 7 years older than I, and also Strong (who is mentioning Cory favourably
5:266
The Letters of George Santayana
in his will) and who is one year older: not a great difference, and in any case a foolish expectation to build upon. How could we manage to earmark a moderate sum—say $2000—for Mercedes and the same for Cory, in case of my demise? Cory, especially, ought to get something if I die suddenly because he would have to come to Rome to get my clothes, books, and papers, and besides would be suddenly left without the allowance I now give him; and Strong is now ruined as far as his income ^ goes and can supply no cash. ^ Let me know what you [across ] think of this matter; and give the extra copies of the novel to anyone—Bangs or Josephine3 or Barlow—who you think wouldn’t otherwise buy it. [across text] Yours affly G. S. 1
See 14 February 1928. Santayana had inherited his father’s house in Ávila, which he gave to Celedonio Sastre’s sons, Susan’s stepsons, after Josephine’s death in 1930. 3 Josephine Sturgis [Eldredge] Bidwell (1896–1958), the daughter of Santayana’s half brother Robert Sturgis and brother of George Sturgis, married Raymond Brewer Bidwell in 1925. 2
To Rafael Sastre González 11 December 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Sastre)
Hotel Bristol, Roma 11 de Diciembre, 19351 Querido Rafael La boda de la hija menor de Pepe,2 que me participaron hace poco, demuestra que vuestros niños ya dejan de serlo, y este regalito3 que yo les mando por Navidad ya no corresponde a sus años. Pero los mios me impiden de cambiar mis costumbres, y me permiten tratarles como si fueren aún unas criaturas. Nunca he estado mas contento de vivir en Italia y en Roma que en esta época de “sanciones”. ¡Que valientes los italianos! Veremos en lo que para este conflicto artificial, pero de todos modos, sea comedia o tragedia, el papel mas lucido y simpatico, toca a los italianos. En estos últimos años he dejado por completo de ser anglófilo, o como se dice en ingles, anglomaniático. Se me figura que aquel país ha cambiado mucho, la aristocracia, que era admirable, ha abdicado, y en general Inglaterra parece
1933–1936
5:267
renunciar a la grandeza, busca el apoyo de 53 otras naciones, y tiene mucho miede de encontrarse sola. Cariñosos recuerdos a Adela y los niños, de tu tio que te quiere Jorge 1 Translation: Dear Rafael The wedding of Pepe’s youngest daughter, of which I was informed a short time ago, shows that your children are ceasing to be children, and this little present that I send them for Christmas is no longer appropriate at their age. But mine prevents me from changing my habits, and allows me to treat them as though they were still small children. I have never been happier to live in Italy and in Rome than in this period of “sanctions”. How courageous the Italians are! We shall see how this artificial conflict ends, but in any case, whether it’s a comedy or a tragedy, the Italians have the most splendid and charming role. In the last few years I have ceased altogether to be an anglophile, or as they say in English, an anglomaniac. I think that country has changed very much, the aristocracy, which was admirable, has abdicated, and in general England seems to give up greatness, seeks the support of 53 other nations, and is very afraid of finding herself alone. Fond regards to Adela and the children, from your uncle who loves you 2 Pepe and his wife, Isabel Martín, had six children, including Josefina, Susana, Isabella, and Teresa. 3 The present was one British pound for each child. (In 1935 a pound was worth about $5 or 52 Spanish pesetas.) Later Santayana increased these gifts to two pounds (per Pedro García Martín, Azafea 1 [University of Salamanca, 1985]: 362).
To John Hall Wheelock 12 December 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Dec. 12, 1935 Dear Mr. Wheelock I have three notes of yours, and a cheque from the firm, all before me. Thank you very much. As to the six copies of my new books assigned to me, I wish you would send me 1 only of The Last Puritan, because I wish to have a copy of the American edition also, and 2 of Obiter Scripta. The rest can go to cover the corresponding number of copies, 5 and 4 respectively, on the two lists of books to be sent to my friends with the Author’s Compliments. You know that I live in hotels and have no facilities for storing books. I keep one or two hundred here, where I have a sitting-room; but they have to be packed and unpacked every spring and autumn, when I leave for the
5:268
The Letters of George Santayana
warm season. It is better, therefore, to reduce my possessions to a minimum, and I like to do so. Otherwise I suppose I should adopt a different mode of life. Yours sincerely GSantayana Obiter Scripta by G. Santayana Please send a copy, with the Author’s Compliments, to each of the following addresses: The Robbins Library, Emerson Hall, Cambridge, Mass. The Harvard Union, Quincy St. '' '' The Delphic Club, 9 Linden St. '' '' Mrs. C. H. Toy, 383 Harvard St. '' '' Mr. George Sturgis, 1 Federal St. Boston '' B. A. Beal, Esq., 60 State S '' '' The Librarian of King’s College, Cambridge, England Logan Pearsall Smith, Esq., 11 St. Leonard’s Terrace, Chelsea, London, England Daniel Cory, Esq., 52 Cranley Gardens, London, S.W.7. Don Antonio Marichalar, Independencia 2, Madrid, Spain. C. A. Strong, Esq., “Le Balze,” Fiesole, Florence, Italy. Baron A. W. Westenholz, Sophienterrasse 14, Hamburg, Germany. The Last Puritan by G. Santayana. Please send a copy, with the Author’s Compliments, to each of the following addresses: Mrs. R. Burnside Potter,1 Antietam Farm, Smithtown, Long Island, N.Y. Mrs. C. H. Toy, 383 Harvard St, Cambridge, Mass, The Harvard Union, Quincy St. '' '' The Delphic Club, 9 Linden St. '' '' Mr. George Sturgis, 1 Federal St., Boston '' B. A. Beal, Esq., 60 State St. '' '' Dr. José Zozaya,2 Gladwyne, Pa. G. S.
1933–1936
5:269
1 Elizabeth “Lily” Stephens Clare Fish married Robert Burnside Potter in 1894. The daughter of Nicholas Fish (for years American minister at Brussels), she had been educated abroad, spoke French and German, and learned Italian in preparation for the spring 1897 trip through Italy with Santayana. See Persons, 379–81. 2 José Zozaya graduated from Harvard in 1925 as a Doctor of Public Health.
To Sidney Hook 15 December 1935 • Rome, Italy C
(MS: Southern)
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Dec. 15, 1935 Dear Mr. Hook I write to thank you and Kallen for your book on “American Philosophy”1 and I address you rather than him, although he is an older friend, because there is something in your paper which interests me very much, namely, your account of your juvenile flirtation with Platonic Realism, and your pragmatic disillusion afterwards. Russell and Moore’s early interest in essences had a great influence on me also; but just as in Plato the Ideas have a theological and zoological dignity which my essences wholly lack, so in Russell and Moore’s “concepts”, there was a strain—strain in both meanings of the word—which is absent from my “baubles”, and from my affection for them. And your very living account of your enlightenment on this subject shows me, as I feel, where the trouble lies. It peeps out in the term “subsistence” (which I never use, except possible/y by inadvertence, about the realm of essence); and it becomes obvious when you speak of validity and truth, as claimed by Platonic logic for its structures. Didn’t it become a commonplace some time ago that mathematics, in its own sphere, was not true, but only correct, congruous with itself, and consistent? And wouldn’t the same thing hold of all the internal relations of one essence with another? When you speak of meaning, however, I am a little puzzled, unless you mean applicability and practical importance. A definition seems to me to have meaning, in that it specifies some essence, and distinguishes it from all others; and on those specified characteristics logical relations are demonstrably dependent. But these “meanings” are confined to the realm of essence; and I should entirely agree with you that both Platonic Ideas and mathematical equations have to be exemplified in the world, or at least in human discourse, which is a part of the world, before they can have any validity or
5:270
The Letters of George Santayana
truth. The first chapter of my “Realm of Truth”, on which I am lazily at work now, is to be entitled: There are no necessary truths. All truths, in my use of terms, are eternal, but none are necessary; because truth is a synthetic view or description of existence, and all existence being contingent, all truth is so too. But it is eternally true that each accident that occurs occurs when and where it does. I can’t say I have read all of your volume. I skipped till I got to Holt2 and you, and then skipped most of the rest. I can’t penetrate the thick crust of blind and woolly [across ] abstract diction which covers the no doubt fertile seeds of “American Philosophy”. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 American Philosophy, Today and Tomorrow, edited by Horace M. Kallen and Sidney Hook (New York: Lee Furman, Publishers, 1935). 2 Edwin Bissell Holt (1873–1946) was an American psychologist and philosopher noted for innovations in philosophical psychology. His essay for Hook’s book is entitled “The Whimsical Condition of Social Psychology and of Mankind.”
To Boylston Adams Beal 23 December 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Dec. 23, 1935 Dear Boylston You are of all persons the one who can read The Last Puritan most from the inside, and from the beginning to the end. The originals in most cases—where there are distinct originals—are known to you better than to me. Those you suggest are of course right in all cases, although I am inclined to put the centre of gravity sometimes in other quarters, less familiar to you. For instance, one fundamental model for Oliver was my school friend Edward Bayley: but of course the bootlace for a watch-chain is Cam Forbes, and also a certain element in his relation to his father.1 I hope the Forbes’s won’t mind the story about the college Bible.2 I tell it as it reached me, or as it shaped itself years after in my own mind. Perhaps it is transformed enough not to be recognizable, and in any case it is such ancient history now that I suppose it may be printed without offence. Constable got into a fright, not at first but when the book was already printed, about the hotels and inns mentioned, and the landlords and land-
1933–1936
5:271
ladies; but after consulting experts and making a few verbal changes, he decided to go ahead. I simply couldn’t have changed the scene from Iffley and Sandford. They seem to take my “intrusion” (as the Times Literary Supplement calls it) in good part: also they are mum about the dubious episodes and characters. Probably the novel-reading public is nowadays hardened to anything. As to “Lord Jim”, this is what Lady Russell writes me. “I have got to the part where Oliver goes on the yacht and meets Lord Jim, whose person and conversation seem curiously familiar.” But this purely moral portrait is of the young Russell, although there is some analogy also in the deterioration towards the end. Lady R. hasn’t written again, or perhaps she feigned not to have read more in order not to have to refer to it, but Jim’s attitude towards women is absolutely her late husband’s. Mollie would recognize it too, and Mary Morris:3 but I don’t know whether they are alive. You see, as this book doesn’t describe much of my own experience, e.g. there is nothing about Spain or about official Harvard, I have had to profit by the experience of my friends, wherever I have had glimpses of it, and R. was one of the chief at one time, although later he completely forgot that we had been good friends at all. That would have made a splendid theme in itself, but I had no occasion for it, and it would have seemed incredible. Fräulein Schlote was my landlady at Göttingen in 1886. I am sorry for the coincidence in the name.—I should have sent you a copy of the English edition [across ] had I known that the American one was to be so long delayed. You will receive a copy about Feb. 1. Yours ever G.S 1
William Hathaway Forbes (1840–97) was a rich “sportsman, and a man in whose life there was something vague and ineffectual” (Persons, 347). Called Colonel Forbes after his Civil War service, he founded and was president of Bell Telephone Company (1878–87), directed several other companies, and was a horse breeder. 2 See 27 July 1935 to Wheelock and footnote number three. 3 Russell married Marion “Mollie” Cumbermould (b. c. 1855), his second wife, on 31 October 1901. He divorced her fifteen years later to marry “Elizabeth.” See Persons, 476–81. Mary Morris may be the young Englishwoman, called “Martha Turner” in Persons (470–77), with whom Russell was involved in 1894 while married to Mabel Edith Scott.
5:272
The Letters of George Santayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 25 December 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Hotel Bristol, Rome Christmas, 1935
Dear Cory The doctor took his leave this morning, and I have been out several times, feeling almost normal. Any sudden movement of the head downwards, especially on the left side, or lying on the left side in bed, still brings on a queer feeling; but I am learning to avoid such movements instinctively, and otherwise I feel perfectly well. [illegible]Still, I am following your advice in not going any more to restaurants, and having a simple lunch here before going to the Pincio, weather permitting. I have risotto one day and pasta asciuta1 the next, and stewed fruit. It seems to be sufficient for the present, with a light dinner in the evening, and one egg for breakfast. I hope you approve. I have written to George Sturgis—he has moved his office to 111 Devonshire Street, Boston—telling him that I am not satisfied with the minor arrangements in regard to legacies in case of my death, and that particularly I wish to leave a small sum to you and to my old Spanish friend Mercedes, say $2000 each: in your case to cover your expenses in coming to Rome, or otherwise getting hold of my effects and my manuscripts; and in Mercedes’ case—she is about 80—simply as an expression of affection. I expect to hear before long how he suggests that such parting presents might be provided for without changing the deed of trust that disposes of my property in general. I have no doubt he will manage it somehow, if in no other way, simply as a fulfilment on his part of my express wishes. During these two weeks of confinement I have written two lively articles, one on Russell’s new book “Religion & Science” and the other, for Scrutiny, on T. S. Eliots comparison of Dante & Shakespeare.2 Mrs. Leavis (are they Jews?) seems to be going to edit a book [across ] of my literary criticisms, with a preface by her husband.3 I seem to be having a boom for the [across page one ] moment, but don’t build upon it. These things are local and temporary. Don’t go to Cannes unless you really like to. There is no reason [across page one text ] why you should. Yours affly G. S.
1933–1936
5:273
1
Pasta asciutta is macaroni with cheese (Italian). “Bertrand Russell’s Searchlight” (American Mercury 37 [March 1936]: 377–79) is a review of Religion and Science (London, 1935). “Tragic Philosophy” (Scrutiny 4 [March 1936]: 365–76) discusses Selected Essays (London, 1935). 3 Mrs. Frank (Queenie Dorothy “Q. D.”) Leavis (1906–81) was a literary critic and scholar who married Frank Leavis in 1929. She wrote “The Critical Writings of George Santayana” (Scrutiny 4 [1935]: 278–95) and a review of Puritan (Scrutiny 4 [1935]: 320–28). No book of Santayana’s criticisms by either Leavis has been located. 2
To George and Rosamond Sturgis 25 December 1935 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome, Christmas, 1935 Dear George and Rosamond Since yesterday I am living in a garden of white roses and violets—also a pot of azalias from my landlord who is a member of Parlaiment and head of the Fascist organization of hotel-keepers—and I am feeling that a sort of Santayana boom is going on in various quarters at once. Scrutiny, an ultra-critical intellectualist quarterly published at Cambridge (in England) has suddenly taken me up: I have written (feeling very lively during my illness) an article for their next issue, also one for the American Mercury;1 and the Scrutiny people, the editor and his wife, are going to edit a book of my collected literary criticisms. The novel, except for the review I sent you, has hardly been squarely faced: that may come later; but the critics seem to be favourable, without daring to commit themselves to any judgement or even analysis. I think perhaps the book in length and in subject is rather too much for them. You will see, and hear, what people will say in America. I don’t want to bother: what is done is done, and I am going on, while life lasts, with other matters. The doctor said goodbye this morning. I am practically well again, but am going to avoid restaurants in future and have very frugal regular meals all in my sitting-room. The political situation, though dangerous, is exciting and helps to keep one young, at least in Italy. Life was never pleasanter here, at least for me, than it is now, and I admire the Italians in their courage, as I did the English during the war. I don’t so much admire them now. They are a nice people, but their minds are silly. Phrases and crazes completely take them in.
5:274
The Letters of George Santayana
How surprising to receive flowers and a Christmas letter as it were by wireless! Thank you very much Yours affly G.S. 1 The American Mercury (1924–80) was a monthly magazine founded by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan.
To Unidentified Recipient [1936?] • [Rome, Italy?]
(MS: Unknown)
[Carta a un editor]1 Mi renuncia a conceder la exclusividad a un traductor no se basa simplemente en las consideraciones que usted señala,2 sino en el hecho de que una traducción, especialmente una buena traducción, es una obra original, como toda obra de arte; como lo es de seguro la versión de R B de los poemas de Oscar Wilde3—y probablemente mucho mejor que el original. El punto esencial en la traducción de mi obra no es el estilo ni la elocuencia, sino la perspicacia filosófica y la claridad dialéctica. No voy a esperar que un traductor discierna exactamente mi sentimiento o mi propósito a este respecto; pero me gustaría que sintiera estimulada su propia perspicacia y claridad, aunque fuera en oposición a mis ideas. Y consideraría lastimoso vedar a otros jóvenes estusiastas que torcieran o enderezaran mi sentir en otra guisa. Los clásicos deben ser retraducidos por cada generación. Mi obra no corre este riesgo; pero el deseo de la exclusividad, siendo como es de orden financiero, es en mi caso por esta razón poco razonable, ya que nadie iba a soñar en competir con ustedes en el mercado. 1 Translation: [Letter to a publisher] My refusal to grant the exclusivity to a translator is not based simply on the considerations that you indicate, but on the fact that a translation, especially a good translation, is an original work, like all works of art; as surely is the version of the poems of Oscar Wilde translated by R B—and probably much better than the original. The essential point in the translation of my work is not the style nor the eloquence, but the philosophical perspicacity and the dialectical clarity. I do not expect that a translator will discern exactly my sentiment or purpose in this respect; but I would be pleased if he felt stimulated in his own perspicacity and clarity, although he might be in opposition to my ideas. And I would consider pathetic impeding other young enthusiasts who might twist or straighten my feelings in another guise. The classics ought to
1933–1936
5:275
be retranslated by each generation. My work does not run this risk; but the desire for exclusivity, being as it is from the financial order, is in my case hardly reasonable for this reason, since nobody would dream of competing with you in the market. 2 A publishing company had asked for exclusive rights to the translation of Santayana’s works. 3 Oscar (Fingal O’Flahertie Wills) Wilde (1854–1900), an Irish-born poet, dramatist, and novelist, led an aesthetic movement which advocated art for art’s sake. His works include The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895). Ricardo Baeza (b. 1890), author and translator whose works were published in Buenos Aires in the 1930s and 1940s, translated the complete works of Oscar Wilde (1943) and Santayana’s Puritan (1940). Oscar Wilde’s Poems (1881) is a simple pastiche of other famous poets’ works.
To Otto Kyllmann 1 January 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Bristol, Rome, Jan. 1, 1936 Dear Mr. Kyllmann There is some pedantry in this correspondent (whose letter I return) but he is partly right in his complaints.1 The date on p. 1692 should be 1907, and I have had it corrected for the American edition, but noticed it too late for yours. In saying it ought to be 1908 our friend is misled, probably by the same circumstance that misled me in writing the manuscript; namely, that as Oliver was born on October 1–st 1890, for nine months of each year he seems to be one year older than he really is. Thus the summer when he is sixteen, and goes on the yacht, is the summer of 1907, not of 1806, as I had first hastily calculated, by adding 16 to the date of his birth. I think this is the only error about dates and ages of which I have been guilty, having long had a family chart with all the chief characters and dates carefully recorded. The date of Oliver’s birth suggested on front flap is only approximate and, as I told you, not quite accurate: but why demand chronological accuracy in a fiction? As to the misprints, they are rather numerous, for reasons which we have discussed before. My eyes are not sharp, and I read with my memory. Perhaps the printers, too, might have been more keen-sighted. I send you a list of the errata I have so far discovered3 Yours sincerely GSantayana
5:276
The Letters of George Santayana
P.S. I am writing a friendly note to this critic, so that you needn’t trouble to reply to him further unless you choose. 1
Unidentified. Page 137 in the critical edition. 3 Unlocated. 2
To Otto Kyllmann 5 January 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Jan. 5, 1936 Dear Mr. Kyllmann I have taken in Scrutiny since it began publication, and have recently had some correspondence with Mrs. Leavis (who had two articles about me in the last number) concerning the collection of my literary criticisms which her husband says he would like to edit. I am much pleased, of course, that my old and forgotten ideas should be revived in this very modern circle, although perhaps I am not in full sympathy with all their tendencies. As to the American collection, (to appear, I believe, shortly) it contains little but technical philosophy, and nothing that Mr. Leavis wishes to include in his volume. Nothing out of my bound books, only loose articles, will appearx in Obiter Scripta (the title of the Columbia book). There is to be, next year, another collection of extracts, made by Prof. Irwin Edman, with an introduction. I don’t know what it will contain, but he is a very intelligent and sympathetic person, and a professional philosopher, so that the literary side, if included, will probably not predominate. [across left margin ] x Together with an astonishing bibliography of all my writings. I think, therefore, that these American anthologies won’t interfere with the English sale of Mr. Leavis’ proposed volume; and eventually there would be some demand for it, perhaps, in American colleges also. Scribner is to publish both the American books, and they would doubtless advise you better than I can about the prospects for Mr. Leavis’ publication. Yours sincerely GSantayana
1933–1936
5:277
P.S. The editors of Obiter Scripta are a Mr. Büchler and a Mr. Schwartz, who have also compiled the bibliography. I know nothing about them except that they are young and industrious, and presumably Jews. I like their choice of loose articles very much, and have written a fresh preface for the volume.
To Bonamy Dobrée 6 January 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Leeds)
Hotel Bristol Rome Jan. 6, 1936 Dear Sir The paper on Berkeley was written long ago, when you first suggested it; and I understood that my silence meant that no obstacle had arisen. I have since added a page or two, as new points occurred to me, and these will need to be put in their places, or condemned, on a final revision of the whole. I think you said the manuscript would not be wanted before March. Please let me know if this is wrong, and also if you wish it sent to any other address than your present one Yours very truly GSantayana
To George Sturgis 9 January 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Jan. 9, 1936 Dear George My health is practically restored to what it used to be, but I am still a bit dizzy at times (only for a moment) if I make certain movements of the head. The doctor thought it was some trouble in the semicircular canals of the left ear, and suggested a specialist; but if it gets no worse than it is now I think I can worry along; I don’t want the strain and the interruption of an operation if it can be avoided. The only difference my bad turn has made is that I have given up going to restaurants, and have a simple
5:278
The Letters of George Santayana
lunch, as well as dinner, in my sitting-room before going out for my daily walk. I am also still taking some camphor in drops for the heart, which doesn’t trouble me consciously, but I daresay is a little sluggish. My mind and spirits, at any rate, are not affected. On the contrary, I feel particularly fit and active intellectually, and work and read with much pleasure. As to a report of my receipts for income tax, I keep no account except my bank-book or rather the stumps of my cheque-book; and B. S. & Co now send me back the cheques with a copy of their entry in their own books: but I am afraid I haven’t preserved all these records. I can say that last year what I received, not from you, from the U.S. was less than $1,000, including about $350 from Mr. Gardiner,1 representing your father’s legacy to me; and from English publishers I received only two or three hundred dollars. This year, however, I will keep an exact account and let you know what it amounts to. Cory tells me that the novel has already gone in England into a second impression, so that no doubt my total receipts with the $5000 from the Book-Club, will be considerable. My English royalties have the British income-tax—about 10%— deducted at the source; but I suppose that would not make any difference in America. Do the British receipts, in case of a person not an American citizen, come in at all in the American returns?2 I should think not. As to the proposal that I should make a will for the odds and ends of my belongings, the matter was broached years ago. I went to the Spanish consul here: I consulted the Sastres and their lawyer in Avila; and there were everywhere so many obstacles and so many things to explain that were inexplicable from the Spanish point of view, that I gave up the idea. Better die intestate. My legal heirs will be you and Josephine, your sister; and it was on that basis that I was appealing to you to give something in my name to Cory and to Mercedes, should she survive me. Now, if you find that I can make a simple will, good in America, to cover these matters, I should be glad to sign it at the American consulate here, as I did the Deed of Trust years ago. Send me the document, or let me know in what form it should be drawn up if a “holograph” is desirable. As to the provisions I wish to make in it, I should rather like to know first how much I am likely to leave, not in the Trust already drawn up. If there was enough, I should like to renew the gifts which I was making in that memorandum I sent you years ago, of which I, Cory, Strong, and Onderdonk also have copies. Here is a summary: 1. Deed of Trust confirmed 2. House in Avila (no longer mine)
1933–1936
5:279
3. Books & effects in Charles Augustus Strong’s house to him, or to his ^ ^ daughter or her husband, George and Margaret de Cuevas, (now Marqués & Marquesa de Piedrablanca de Guana) 4. Manuscripts, books, & clothes at the Hotel Bristol, or other residence of mine at the time of my death, to Daniel MacGhie Cory (middle name sometimes spelled Magee) who is also to be my literary executor and to receive all royalties due to me from the publishers of my writings. 5. Out of the balance at Brown Shipley & Co £1000 to Nancy Toy (Mrs. Crawford H. Toy) of Cambridge, Mass, and the residue, if not more that £500 to Andrew Joseph Onderdonk of Vienna. But I now have scarcely £500 in that bank. Mrs. Toy is hardly likely to survive me, but if she did I feel about her a little as about Cory and Mercedes. I should like her to feel that I had remembered her, and a present would come in well, because she is rather hard up. 6. Executors mentioned: but this is out of date, because the Sastres are included on account of the house in Avila that I was leaving them; that was in 1928. Now I should want no executor but you, or failing you Mr. Gardiner, or whoever is provided for in the Deed of Trust. 3 & 4 of the above I should like to retain as they stand but instead of 5, I should like to leave $2000 to Cory and Mercedes and to Mrs. Toy and (if there is a remainder) to Onderdonk. There might well be a remainder, if my London bank account were reinforced, or if the two ladies (who are both older and I) had predeceased me. Is this clear? If not, there is, let us hope, plenty of time to ask for explanations and to send them. The girl whose wedding cards you sent me is Pepe’s second daughter, who was 12 or 13 when you were last in Avila. Evidently you are like your father: you have eyes only for marriageable ladies. Josefina, the older and prettier one is also to be married soon. Yours affly G.S. 1 Robert Hallowell Gardiner Jr. worked for Fiduciary Trust Company of Boston until 1941. 2 Santayana retained his Spanish citizenship throughout his life.
5:280
The Letters of George Santayana
[Frank Raymond Leavis] 13 January 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Texas)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London S.W.1 Hotel Bristol, Rome Jan. 13, 1936
To the Editor of Scrutiny Cambridge Dear Sir The two notices of me by Mrs. Leavis in the last number of Scrutiny have prompted to write the enclosed article and to send it to you. I am sorry that it is in manuscript. The English lady who used to do my type-writing has not returned to Rome this year, and I am helpless. I hope at least the handwriting is legible, and that, if you accept the article, you will have it set in time to let me see the proofs. I expect to remain at the Hotel Bristol, in Rome, until the summer. Yours faithfully GSantayana
To Charles Augustus Strong 17 January 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Jan. 17, 1936 Dear Strong Perhaps the enclosed may interest you.1 Don’t return it. I am answering properly, and am relieved to see that my indiscretions, are taken in good part. But is this a book for a girl’s school? The responsibility of presenting it, in any case, will not be mine. I hope you are finding health and entertainment at Cannes. Do you ever see the family at San Remo? Yours ever G.S. 1
Enclosed is the typewritten letter of 13 January 1936 from Norman Tweddle, the secretary and bursar of Saint Felix School in Southwold, Suffolk, which Strong’s daughter had attended. It says that he has read Puritan, which was recommended to him by the retired headmistress of the school, Lucy Silcox. Miss Silcox had met Santayana and Strong at Oxford before World War I. Tweddle is pleased that, in the novel, Irma
1933–1936
5:281
Schlote was a pupil-teacher at Saint Felix School. He intends to give the book to the school library and asks Santayana to inscribe the fly-leaf. He also mentions that Strong is a generous benefactor.
To Gorham Bert Munson 25 January 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Virginia)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Jan. 25, 1936 Dear Mr. Munson1 If your letter had said only that you and Prof. Farliss had contracted to write a book about poetry in a great hurry, and wanted help,2 I should have answered you very briefly, or not at all. But you have chosen my old tragedy, Lucifer, to consider; and that, unless you choose it as a glaring example of what young poets should avoid, is so singular a choice, that I am tempted to write to you at some length about it. It was a work of adolescence. I hardly know how I felt about it then: the preface to the édition-de-luxe3 gives a grown up view of it; and now, in my old age, it seems to me to have been a fantastic version of a theme which is centa/ ral in my personal philosophy and experience. You will find another reading of it in The Last Puritan (begun at the same time, 45 years ago, but only just finished and published). — but n/ Now I prefer to conceive it in general terms, and to put it thus: The spirit is an animal function, if we consider its basis and its fate, but it is a divine faculty in its allegiance, having all truth and all existence for its object, and seeing everything necessarily under the form of eternity. It therefore regards its incarnation as ignominious and protests against all the natural passions and partialities to which it is subject. But this protest is perfectly vain and hopeless. Spirit is rooted in the flesh, and these rebellions on its part merely derange without emancipating it. The solution would be a sort of Epicureanism:4 — but yet spirit itself distrusts and despises such a self-subordination; so that the conflict remains perennial and the end, for most high spirits, is tragic. I don’t remember how many years elapsed between the time when I began Lucifer and the time when I finished it:/. — but In fact all my work is of long gestation, even when the composition is not long drawn out. But
5:282
The Letters of George Santayana
it was long drawn out in Lucifer, though not so much as in The Last Puritan. A paper of mine on Tragic Philosophy is to appear in the next (March) number of Scrutiny (published in the English Cambridge). It may throw some light on the matter of my conception of poetry, if you care to look it up. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Gorham Bert Munson’s (1896–1969) works include books on prose writing, studies of Robert Frost and Waldo Frank, and Munson’s letters from Hart Crane. 2 Farliss is unidentified and no book has been located. 3 A revised limited edition (450 copies) of Lucifer, or the Heavenly Truce: A Theological Tragedy was published by Dunster House (1924) with a new preface. 4 A Greek, Epicurus (341–270 B.C.) defined philosophy as the art of making life happy, with intellectual pleasure or serenity the only kinds of good. His teachings (Epicureanism) were later debased to the “eat, drink, and be merry” formula of life— opposite of his belief.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 26 January 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Jan. 26, 1936 Dear Cory In one sense, I am well again, and I go out (after lunch) every day, weather permitting. On the other hand, I am still subject to that strange vertigo in the left side of my head, brought on by certain movements; and my pulse is not quite as regular as it used to be. The doctor advises me to go on taking some drops of “Coramina”, with camphor in them, and I feel somewhat lazy and easily tired. Physically only, not mentally. I am working very well, and quite happy. But I doubt very much that I shall feel like taking so long a journey as to Paris in the Summer, especially as I have no place, already tried, in which to settle down on arrival. That I could do in Cortina; or if I prefer not to travel, I can go, in a motorbus, from here to Fiuggi, which everybody recommends, including the Onorevole Pinchetti, my landlord here, who is head cook and bottle-washer of the Union of Italian Landlords. On the whole, I should think it wiser of you to stay in England. I don’t think a visit to Strong would change anything in your prospects for the
1933–1936
5:283
future, which I understand remain as they were; and the pleasure of those conversations would hardly be unmixed for either of you. On the other hand, you are happy in England and sufficiently employed. You are right in thinking the English a decent people: but they are not very intelligent. The inner fog is too dense. My yearly account has arrived: income unchanged, capital nominally increased a good deal. There is therefore no ground for worry, and we can go on as we are. My nephew doesn’t yet understand about my proposed parting gifts, but I think I can make him see what I mean with a little patience. Yours affy G.S.
To Otto Kyllmann 26 January 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Bristol, Rome. Jan. 26, 1936 Dear Mr. Kyllmann I was pleased the other day to receive a fresh copy of The Last Puritan showing it had gone into a second impression. In looking to see whether the errata had been corrected, I was rather puzzled. The date of Irma’s letter on p. 169 had been duly changed to 1907; and I think that was a point discussed in the very letter in which I sent you a long list of misprints, more than half of which, however, remain uncorrected. I don’t understand how this happened, or whether the list I sent is now in the printers’ hands. I therefore enclose another list1 of as many errata as I have discovered or had pointed out to me. Most of them are trivial, but we might as well aim at perfection. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Unlocated.
5:284
The Letters of George Santayana
To John Hall Wheelock 1 February 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 1. 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock Yesterday, with the greatest punctuality, I received my copy of your edition of The Last Puritan. I like the aspect of the volume very much, the changes from the English edition are less noticeable than I expected, the book scarcely longer or heavier to hold, and the binding more to my taste. The printing also seems more accurate, as far as I have had time to look. You have very successfully disguised the inordinate length of this “novel”, and I hope the public will be induced to swallow and to digest it. There is only one thing I could have wished different, and that is the dust-jacket or paper cover, or whatever it is called. It seems to me very ugly, in the first place, and not very distinct visually. Is the landscape supposed to be Beacon Street?1 And why has my photo been redrawn so as to make me cross-eyed and ferocious? I know that self-knowledge is often self-deception, but I feel not at all as this personage looks. Besides, the information supplied in the two flaps is not always accurate. I was taken to the U.S. when I was eight years old by my father (my mother was already there) and I left for the last time (so far) in January 1912. The tone also is misleading in places. I don’t object to people speaking of my “beloved Spain”; I have a certain fond2 of attachment to my native land; but my love of it is manifested like my love for the United States (which also exists in a certain way) by living there as little as possible. Then as to my head-quarters in Europe, they were at first in Paris (as I say in The Last Puritan) and for the time after the war have been here in Rome, in this hotel. During the war I was for five years in England without interruption, but I have hardly been there since: twice only, each time merely to give a lecture.3 All these details are of no consequence; but if such things are mentioned at all in one’s own publications during one’s lifetime, they might as well be stated accurately. The jacket of the English edition also has inaccuracies of another sort, saying Oliver was born in Boston in the late ’80, whereas I who created him know that he was born at Great Falls, Conn. on Oct. 1–st 1890.
1933–1936
5:285
I am sending you an off-print of my philosophical autobiography, the beginning of which gives some dates and facts about my life.4 [across ] Yours sincerely G Santayana [across page one ] P.S. The story about a farewell lecture applauded for 20 minutes is without any foundation. There was no farewell lecture. I was expected to return to [across text ] Harvard after 18 months.5 1
The dust jacket is a dull gold color. Beacon Street is in Boston. Depth (French). 3 In 1923 Santayana traveled from Paris to England to deliver his Herbert Spencer Lecture, “The Unknowable,” at Oxford University on 24 October. His final visit to England occurred in 1932 when he left Rome to give the address “Locke and the Frontiers of Common Sense” on 19 October at a meeting to commemorate the tercentenary of John Locke’s birth. 4 “A Brief History of My Opinions.” 5 One story has Santayana bringing his final lecture to an eloquent conclusion just as the class period was ending (a characteristic of his teaching style), then opening a French window and saying: “Now I have an appointment with the Spring,” and stepping out through the window. The facts are that few Harvard classrooms have French windows and that Santayana’s last semester at Harvard was the first (autumn) semester of 1911–12, ending in December. 2
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 2 February 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 2, 1936 Dear Cory Your professorship of Base Ball may be a good thing for your novel— better than a professorship of philosophy. Those rather common pupils of yours, and the weekly journeys to and from town will give you more varied ideas than you would be likely to pick up in a genteel country hotel. You may make friends of new types; I am sure you could do them perfectly on the stage, why not then on paper? I have always taken for granted that you would be willing to come and look after me if I was seriously ill. You are the only person that I should like to have about at such a time. But so long as I can look after myself tolerably, and can lead my regular life, there is no occasion for calling you. I think I can work better when I am quite alone; and at present I am in hopes of getting the Realm of Truth into shape, and eventually also the
5:286
The Letters of George Santayana
Realm of Spirit. I work very slowly, but steadily, and an hour or two every morning counts at the year’s end. Then, on your side of the equation, I expect it is better and pleasanter for you to be in England and quite your own master. An old man, even if he behaves nicely, is always a rather heavy anchor to be moored to. You might come to join me if I go to Paris in the summer, or if the political atmosphere is not too thick, you might make me a visit at Cortina, if I go there. There is a golf-links of a go aying there sort at the Miramonti, but unfortunately I rather dread st — ^^ again, on account of the monotonous and longish daily walk, which is involved in going from there to the village—and I like to go to the village. The Savoy is in the town itself; you could of course go to the Miramonti to play golf even if we were not staying there; and there are also tennis courts at and near the Savoy. If, however, I should go to Fiuggi, we had better postpone our meeting till another year. The American edition of the novel has arrived: it looks very well. The page is a bit larger than in the English edition, there are 100 pages less, and fewer misprints. The back is square, the binding darkish green, with gold lettering, and the volume is as light as the English one in the hand. But the dust-jacket is hideous and full of false, low-class title-tattle about myself, and with a horrible cross-eyed ferocious drawing, apparently after my last — photo, but very ill-drawn. I have complained of this to [across ] Wheelock: but the book itself is very satisfactory. I shall soon be getting letters about it. Some have already arrived. Yours affly GS.
To Otto Kyllmann 5 February 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 5, 1936 Dear Mr. Kyllmann Don Antonio Marichalar1 (address: Independencia, 3, Madrid) who for years has been interested in my books, and has translated some minor things of mine into Spanish, now wishes to undertake the translation of The Last Puritan. He is in negaciations with one or two publishers, and would like to know what your position would be in the matter. Would you (or your agent who, as I remember, had charge of translations, unless it was only of translations into German) kindly write to him informing him of your views and conditions? I am writing to you, instead of letting him
1933–1936
5:287
do so directly, because I knew you would refer his request to me; and we might save time by eliminating me in the beginning. Mr. Marichalar is a distinguished person in the younger literary world of Madrid, and writes very modernist poetic Spanish; he is moreover a man of independent position and no hungry literary hack, and if he has the patience to do this long book, or even (as has been considered wiser) a somewhat abridged form of it, already indicated by me in detail, I think we couldn’t hope to do better. As to fees (if any) you know that for my part I want nothing. Spanish books in particular must be cheap, and the sale of a translation is never sure; so that if we want anything done, we must lighten the publisher’s expenses as much as possible. If you think that, on principle, something should be charged, I hope you will make the fee nominal, or reserve what ulterior rights you may think essential, but facilitate the operation as much as in us lies. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Marichalar translated the Prologue of Puritan which was published in Sur 7 ( Buenos Aires, July 1937): 7–28.
To Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis 5 February 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome. Feb. 5, 1936 Dear Rosamond You are very good to want to come and nurse me, and I am sure you would do it better than the Blue Sisters1 to whom I expect to be consigned, if I have a long illness. If you came, I should feel as Oliver did when Edith (who had a trained nurse’s certificate) went to see him at the Stillman Infirmary2—not that I am very like Oliver or you—thank God— very like Edith; but perhaps my last illness won’t be prolonged, and it won’t matter much who telephones for the undertaker. My ups and downs in health are very marked and very sudden. Now I feel all right again, only perhaps a little lazier physically, although mentally I was very fit even when confined to my room, and wrote a long article in my best style—unless I am in my dotage, and pleased with anything I may reel out.
5:288
The Letters of George Santayana
The editor (of Scrutiny) to whom I sent it, however, and who doesn’t pay his contributors, said he was highly honoured. I fence in it a little with T. S. Eliot, who was once a pupil of mine,3 but never by any chance refers to me. Cory says he is afraid of me, as of a sort of devil. But you don’t know who Cory is. He will probably be the person to look after me when I get more dotty. He is an American but has now been ten years in Europe, and has helped me and my old friend Strong with some of our books. I call him my secretary, and he is to be my literary executor. At this moment, however, he is in London, giving some Sporting Cockneys lessons in baseball, for which he gets 30 shillings each time, and his fare from Bournemouth, where he likes to [illegible ]waste the But h/ He is half Irish and very human best years of his life playing golf. — ^ ^ for a quasi-philosopher. I don’t wonder that you feel some sympathy with Peter Alden: he is an amiable type of failure; there were many such in my day. And thank you for being sorry for Oliver, instead of saying, like Christopher Morley,4 that Oliver is a mere idea. — He Morley says that, because he is a professional who doesn’t need to read the books he reviews; and perhaps also because, in looking through the pages, he got an impression that Oliver was merely negative, just congealed. And when you say you pity him, and would like to blow him up with dynamite, so as to teach him to be more human, perhaps you express much the same feeling. But the negation in Oliver was double: he not only was austere to the natural man, but he was austere to all the conventions: to his mother, the Harvard philosophers, and even the Vicar’s religion. And the dynamite was actually applied to him by Jim and Mario, and he failed to become human. Why was that? Just because he was tied up? But he wasn’t tied up, intellectually: he was absolutely without deliberate prejudices. The real reason—and I am afraid I have failed to make this plain in the novel—was that he was a mystic, touched with a divine consecration, and couldn’t give way to the world, the flesh, or the devil. He [illegible]ought to have been a saint. But here comes the deepest tragedy in his lot: that he lived in a spiritual vacuum. American breeding can be perfect in form, but it is woefully thin in substance; so that if a man is born a poet or a mystic in America he simply starves, because what social life offers and presses upon him is offensive ^ ^ to him, and there is nothing else. He evaporates, he peters out.—That is my intention, or rather perception, in Oliver. The trouble wasn’t that he wouldn’t be commonplace: there are plenty of people to be common-
1933–1936
5:289
place: the trouble was that he couldn’t be exceptional, and yet be positive. There was no tradition worthy of him for him to join on to. Your friend Bernard Perry (who I suppose is a son of my old colleague at Harvard Professor R. B. Perry, and a nephew of Berenson)5 writes about me very correctly (as most people don’t: see the dust-jacket of the American edition of The Last Puritan, all full of falsehoods) and it is evident that he has read what I say about myself in various places, already published. And he must have heard more or less frank criticism of me from his relations. He is very prudent, however, and leaves a certain impression of vagueness. Of course it is very hard to say the truth about a person still living, especially if one knows the truth: but I expect he is simply young and modest, and has not yet put his reading together into a single view. I haven’t yet received any other copy of the Book of the Month magazine, but someone did send me a cutting about my candidature for the American throne.6 Oliver would have [illegible ]served better. Yours affectionately G.S. P.S. I was much interested to hear that all your brothers belong ed to the ^ ^ “Gashouse”, and I have looked them up in the Delphic Club Catalogue, which I always receive and keep by me, to — look— up verify facts about my old friends. In the years 1891–1893 that club was absolutely my home, Howard Cushing, Julian Codman 7 the Potter brothers, & Gordon Bell ^ ^ (not to speak of Boylston Beal and “Kid” Woodworth,8 the two elders who kept me in countenance there) made the place exceedingly congenial; we had a “Drunks Exercise Club” that — walk took a walk and went to vespers every afternoon; and I became so attached to the place, that I kept going there off and on for some years after that, until 1896–7 when I spent the winter in England, and broke the intimacy of that connection. That second youth of mine was far pleasanter than my first youth, when I was myself an undergraduate; and the original of Oliver & Mario was to have been a story set in that club. But there was no possible plot, and the idea smouldered until the war suggested to me how it might be worked out. 1 The Piccola Compagna di Maria (Little Company of Mary) sisters were familiarly called “Blue Nuns” for the color of their habits. 2 The Stillman Infirmary, built in 1900–1901, is named for James Stillman, American banker and capitalist, who made large donations to Harvard. 3 T. S. Eliot had been a pupil of Santayana at Harvard in the first decade of the twentieth century.
5:290
The Letters of George Santayana
4 Christopher Darlington Morley (1890–1957) was an American novelist, journalist, and essayist. He worked on several magazines and served as contributing editor of the Saturday Review from 1924 to 1941. In January 1936 Morley wrote a review of Puritan for the Book-of-the-Month Club News. 5 Bernard Perry is unidentified. Bernard Berenson (1865–1959) was a Lithuanian-born art critic and connoisseur of Italian Renaissance art. Like Santayana, he was a graduate of both the Boston Latin School and Harvard College. 6 Boston’s Monarchist Party chose Santayana as its candidate for the first American king. Their second choice was native Bostonian Lucius Beebe. 7 Julian Codman (1870–1932) was a student of Santayana and a member of the Harvard class of 1892. A corporate and real estate lawyer, he was a leader in efforts to repeal prohibition. 8 William McMichael Woodworth (c. 1866–1912) became an instructor of microscopic anatomy at Harvard (1891–97).
To Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz 7 February 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Brooklyn)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 7, 1936 Dear Mr. Buchler & Mr. Schwartz I am glad to hear that Obiter Scripta is on the way to publication; it will be a book very near to my heart, a collection of lost darlings restored to me by your good offices. I hope you are to receive adequate compensation for your hard and prolonged labour. Scribner is giving me 5% royalty on the net sales: it will be very little: but I had it thrust upon me on the ground that you were already satisfied with the arrangements. Is this so? If it amounted to anything worth mentioning, I should wish to pass my royalty on to you, as the real authors of the volume if not of its text; and in any case I hope you will let me send you the proceeds, if any, when they arrive. There is something of Hamlet in Oliver, no doubt: but he has been so long in my mind, and has developed there so much as a natural fungus or other growth, that I am not sure myself exactly what he represents. The nearest I can come to it is to say that he shows the tragedy of being, as you put it, on the outskirts of society, at least in America. There society is all: and a poet or mystic or essentially spiritual man, when he tries to look beyond the busy but empty social life that is pressed upon him—beyond the conscription to which he is subjected—finds nothing else: so that in
1933–1936
5:291
that vacuum he collapses and peters out, not having enough substance in himself to make a spiritual universe. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Henry Seidel Canby 8 February 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Beinecke)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 8, 1936 Dear Mr. Canby Thank you for sending me the interesting and profound criticism you have mal/de of The Last Puritan.1 You are particularly clear-sighted when you say that my view of America is a college (an undergraduate) view, and that Olivers in general might have merged their consciences later in the vast life of the country. I am not blind to this fact, but this was originally, when begun 45 years a y/ go, a college story: and besides the main ^^ stream of American life, though I felt its force, was not known to me intimately enough, or loved by me enough, to allow me later to describe it. But in Mr. [illegible ] James Van de Weyer and in Senator Lunt, also in Edith and the Rev. Edgar Thornton, I give glimpses into the background, which I do not pretend to describe further. Oliver could have lost himself in that background, as Edith actually proposed that he should; only here the mystical vocation which was also a part of his heritage—Jonathan Edwards2 had it—interfered. This is not a specifically American thing: all that is American, or modern, is the absence of any tradition in which the born poet or God-intoxicated man could take root. He therefore simply evaporates and Peters out. In reviewing such a long book, the best critic cannot [illegible ]be always perceptive. You say Jim Darnley is merely a foil for Oliver. Here, however, is what “Elizabeth of the German Garden” writes to me: “I have got to the place where Oliver goes on the yacht and meets Lord Jim, whose person and conversation — arsee m somehow curiously familiar”. Jim, ^ ^ mutatis mutandis,3 is the second Earl Russell, who was a lifelong friend of mine As you print my philosophical autobiography,4 perhaps this small fact may interest you. Yours sincerely GSantayana
5:292
The Letters of George Santayana
1 Canby’s review of Puritan appeared in the 1 February issue of the Saturday Review (pp. 3–4, 12). 2 Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) was an American theologian and philosopher. His early thought was idealistic (under Locke’s influence), and his theology was Calvinistic, emphasizing the supremacy of God. His The Freedom of the Will (1754) sets forth metaphysical and ethical arguments for determinism. 3 Those things being changed that have to be changed (Latin). 4 “Brief History of Myself,” Saturday Review 13 (1 February 1936): 13.
To George Sturgis 10 February 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 10, 1936 Dear George Your yearly account with me, for which I haven’t yet thanked you, was satisfactory in that the income remains about the same, and I can go on merrily living as I do; something rather important at my age, when habits are hard to change and the motor can only run smoothly on a level road. I am feeling all right again, but not ambitious for the throne of the U.S. Mr. Page can have it. Rather rashly, because I hate to carry waste paper about with me, I destroyed last summer at Cortina the record of my receipts and cheques drawn from Jan. to April, of that year, 1935. But I have the stubs of my cheques for several earlier years, and as my receipts from the U.S. are very regular, I have supplied the items from 1934 for that period, and made out the enclosed account. You won’t like its being in £–s–d, but I haven’t any note of the original amounts in $. You see that in saying that these receipts were under $1000 I was not inaccurate. As you are consulting a lawyer about the possibility of my making a will, you might ask him the following question also: How can a foreigner living abroad be subject to income tax for royalties received for his books or articles appearing in America? I understand that I am subject to income tax for property in the U.S. ^ ^ producing interest; and, for instance, for your father’s legacy which I get from Mr. Gardiner, and which is included in the enclosed account. But how am I subject for the $25 paid for my review of Bertrand Russell’s Religion and Science? Isn’t that article just a piece of merchandise sold to the editor of the American Mercury; and surely foreign producers selling
1933–1936
5:293
their goods — in to America are not expected to pay an income-tax to the U.S. for the money received. How should it be collected? Of course, if as in my case, the foreigner happens also to own property in the U.S. he might (by a sort of fiction) be regarded as a member of the community and be taxed on his foreign work as well as on his American property. ^ ^ ^ ^ But this is a kind of usurpation; because the man can be taxed only because he has other property in the country, on which he already pays taxes. As to having my earned income pass through you, I don’t like the idea. It would [across ] mean that this money would sink into my capital, as my yearly savings do. Of course, I could draw my whole income, but I don’t; and [across page one ] I like to have this separate fund, which just now needs replenishing. Yours affly G.S. [on page one] P.S. Fools’ stamps sent me for return postage.1 1
Persons writing to Santayana and requesting a reply sometimes included United States postage, which Santayana, posting mail from Rome, could not use.
To William Jackson, Ltd. 12 February 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS postcard: Texas)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, S.W.1 Rome, Feb. 12, 19361 My “Obiter Scripta” are to appear in March in New York, published by Charles Scribner’s Sons. At least, so I am informed by the editors, Mr. Buchler & Mr. Schwartz, who have made the collection. It contains articles and essays that have never appeared in book-form. GSantayana 1
William Jackson, Ltd. was a London bookseller.
5:294
The Letters of George Santayana
To George Sturgis 15 February 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 15. 1936 Dear George Your long letter of Jan. 30th about the complicated matter of my proposed will confirms the conclusion I came to years ago that, apart from that fortunate Deed of Trust, I must die intestate. When your aunt Susie died I made many inquiries on the subject. Previously the question hadn’t seem pressing because if your aunt had survived her husband, as she expected and as I hoped, I should have gone to make my home with her in Avila, without of course ceasing to live elsewhere for a season whenever I chose. But I should then have had a domicile, with all my books and papers permanently in order; and a Spanish will, no matter how quaintly and /spiously expressed, would then have been the normal and obvious thing to — reprepare. But not living in Spain, and not having a domicile anywhere, the matter is hopeless. I consulted my old friend Onderdonk, who is an “avocat Américain”1 in Vienna, and he consulted an American attorney in Berlin (both of whom had a/ handsome fee s ) ^^ and it appeared that I still ought to make a Spanish will here. But when I went to see about it at the Consulate, I found no end of difficulties, as for instance the requirement of Spanish witnesses in Rome where I don’t know any Spaniards. –[The king and queen are in Rome at this moment, I mean Don Alfonso & Doña Victoria, but even they don’t know me. –] 2 And besides the difficulties you would have with a Spanish (or an Italian) will would be as great, or greater, as those you would encounter if I died intestate: for what documents wouldn’t you have to procure to prove that my bank account in London, my British rights to royalties, and my American rights to the same, were disposed of in your favour or in any body’s favour by that foreign testament? No: it is simpler that you should do what you indicate on the first page of your letter. The English and American publishers would understand and accept your claims at once, and so would B. S. & Co and my only other possessions are my clothes and books here in Rome, at the Hotel Bristol. I have told them, (and I can easily put it down in writing for the proprietor, who is a member of the Italian parlaiment and a leading Fascist) that you are my heir for bills, I mean funeral expenses, etc, and that Cory (who has been here repeatedly
1933–1936
5:295
with me, and knows them all very well) is my heir for assets, such as my manuscripts. Even if you feel that by rights you should, and legally will, inherit these things too, my old clothes and my old papers will not be so precious in your eyes that you w/ should grudge Cory the possession of them. As to my royalties, I haven’t promised them to Cory: but as I think I said in my earlier letter, when I asked you to arrange somehow that she3 should get $2000 on my death (this would have been put into the Deed of Trust, if circumstances had been then what they are now) I feel that Cory ought to get something, especially if I die before Strong. Strong and I have been the cause of Cory’s being kept dangling for years, occupied with our books and with our theories. If it hadn’t been for the crisis, Strong would be looking after him, and there are provisions, even now, in Strong’s will by which Cory is likely to profit. But as it now stands, Cory rather depends upon me, and I feel responsible though not really pledged or much indebted to him, except that he is a pleasant companion and very well versed in my philosophy. If you can arrange about those $2,000, for the immediate future after my death, I am willing to let you have my royalties. How long do royalties continue after an author has died intestate? That is something else that you might ask your legal adviser. I will do what I can for Cory in other ways. For instance, I can give him as a present the M.S. of any book I may — publi write in future, together with all my old MS. I suppose if I give these objects to him in my lifetime, or even on my death bed, nobody would institute legal proceedings to deprive him of them. I am receiving a lot of letters and newspaper reviews about my book. Some of the letters, from strangers, are charming. My friends’ letters, so far, are less satisfactory because I feel they don’t tell me all that they think and that they have preconceptions about me and about the book which prevent them from seeing it as it is. But undoubtedly, a lot of notice is being [across ] taken. The novel is after all a major work. I haven’t been studying the world for 70 years for nothing.— I forgot about my domicile. I think it is still [across page five] at 75 Monmouth St. Brookline.4 At least, I have had none since. But this question will lapse with the project of making a will. Yours affly G.S. 1
American lawyer (French). Alfonso XIII (1886–1941) was king of Spain until 1931 when he went into exile in Rome after the republican faction won the majority in municipal elections. In 1906 Alfonso married Princess Victoria Eugenia of Battenberg (1887–1969), granddaughter of Britain’s Queen Victoria. 2
5:296
The Letters of George Santayana
3 Santayana wished to bequeath $2,000 each to Mercedes de la Escalera, Nancy Saunders Toy, and Cory. 4 This was the address of his mother’s house in Massachusetts.
To William Lyon Phelps 16 February 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Beinecke)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 16, 1936 Dear Billy— Your letter about The Last Puritan was one of the first that reached me, but I have put off thanking you for it until others began to come, so that I h/ could have a certain background on which to place your judgement, other than my own necessarily internal or a priori view; because the hardest thing for an author, especially when he has lived as long as I have with his characters—45 years—is to conceive how they will seem to other people, when conveyed to them only by words. I have pictures, quite as distinct as memories; and my characters speak to me, I don’t have to prompt them. This doesn’t contradict the fact which you mention, and I point to in the Epilogue, that these characters speak my language, and are in some sense masks for my own spirit. On the contrary, that makes, or ought to make, them more living, since they are fetched from an actual life, and only dressed, as an actor on the stage, for their social parts. And I think you are partly wrong, like so many other critics, when you suggest that my characters are ghostly and not “living”. Even the admitted literary character of their talk is not incompatible, as poetry is not incompatible in the drama, with individuality in tone and temper. Of course, I don’t always succeed; yet I think, if you drop all preconceptions or clichés, you will find that there is a good deal of individuality in the way my characters talk, within the frame of what you might call my metre1. It is my writing, but it is their sentiment. Only the book is very long, it can’t leave distinct images if not allowed to settle. The great point is, as with poetry, to get the mind docile and free for suggestion, and then the dramatic spell will work. At least, that is what I can’t help feeling, and what is confirmed by various witnesses. One notices Mrs. Darnley’s special speech; another tells me he can hear Rose talk; and the author of Elizabeth and her German Garden at once recognized her late husband in Jim: “whose person and conversation”, she writes, “are somehow curiously familiar”. And surely Irma and Mrs. Alden are not echoes of myself.
1933–1936
5:297
However, that isn’t the point that matters most in the book or in your letter. You say I don’t love life, and that faith is necessary. Very true: I don’t love life unconditionally; but I enjoy the “mere living” (as Browning has it)2 when I am in good health, which is most of the time: and I enjoy the episodes, unless I am rudely prevented from doing so. If you have my d/ Dialogues in Limbo, and will look at p.p. 156–161, you will find Socrates and me defining the matter exactly. It was Oliver, not I, who didn’t love life, because he hadn’t the animal Epicurean faculty of enjoying it in its arbitrariness and transiency. He was a Spiritual man, incapacitated to be anything else, like Christ, who couldn’t be a soldier or athlete or lover of women or father of a family (or, even, though I don’t say so in the book, a good believing Christian). Now that is a tragic vocation, like the vocation of the poet: it demands sacrifice and devotion to a divine allegiance: but poor Oliver, ready for every sacrifice, had nothing to pin his allegiance to. He was what the rich young man in the Gospel would have been if he had been ready to sell his goods and give to the poor, but then had found no cross to take up and no Jesus to follow.3 Faith, as you say, is needed; but faith is an assurance inwardly prompted, springing from the irrepressible impulse to do, to fight, to triumph. Here is where the third sloppy wash in the family tea-pot is insufficient. And without robustness an imposed intellectual faith wouldn’t do: it would only make a conventional person. You say you can’t understand how I seem to hold my own in the world without faith, and almost without the world. It is quite simple. I have the Epicurean contentment, which was not far removed from asceticism: and besides I have a spiritual allegiance of my own that hardly requires faith, that is, only a humorous animal faith in nature and history, and no religious faith: and this common sense world suffices for intellectual satisfaction, partly in observing and understanding it, partly in dismissing it as, from the point of view of spirit, a transitory and local accident. Oliver hadn’t this intellectual satisfaction, and he hadn’t that Epicurean contentment. Hence the vacancy he faced when he — ov had “overcome the world”. Basta.4 Thank you a thousand times for your friendship. GSantayana 1
Meter (French). Robert Browning (1812–89), the English poet, wrote long narrative poems and dramatic monologues. Here Santayana references Saul, part IX: “How good is man’s life, the mere living!” 3 The books of Matthew, Luke, and Mark in the New Testament mention a similar statement made by Jesus to those who would be his disciples. 4 That’s enough (Italian). 2
5:298
The Letters of George Santayana
To Charles P. Davis 18 February 1936 • Rome, Italy C
(MS: Columbia)
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 18, 1936 Dear Davis Since you complain of my remissness, I will answer your letter, and thank you for the newspaper cuttings at once, but I warn you that I am no letter-writer. Keeping up correspondences is an anachronism, as Mr. Eden says war is: but we sometimes relapse into both, and rather like it. My novel is having a great success. I have already got $5,000 for it (half of what the Book-of-the-Month Club paid Scribner for their edition of 40,000 or 35,000 copies) and more is promissed both by the American and British publishers. Isn’t it an odd thing for an old professor to become a popular entertainer, when he has one foot in the grave, and twenty volumes of philosophy to his discredit? The reviews of The Last Puritan seem strangely timid. I haven’t seen many, because I don’t subscribe to the newspaper-cutting agencies; but both in England and in the United States, while nothing hostile has appeared, there seems to be some embarrassment, and all the tender [illegible ]spots in the book, moral, political, and religious, are avoided with extreme caution. Only the question whether this is really a novel, and whether the characters are “alive” or speak as real people speak, seems to agitate the reviewing mind. But supposing a book is not really a novel, ought it to be one? And if the characters speak as they don’t speak in real life, ought they to speak so in a book? A candid friend, looking at a modernist picture, observed to the artist: “Frankly, I never saw a woman that looked like that” To which the painter replied, “But my friend, this is not a woman. It is a painting.” The only review that I have seen that faces my book squarely is one by Desmond MacCarthy that appeared in the Sunday Times (of London); and even there, the excellent man got mixed up at the beginning with “essences” and wasted half of his space groping in utter darkness. Some letters I have received, especially from strangers, are also very good. You see, my friends and the professional critics begin with preconceptions about me and about novels: they read with a view to finding certain things, or drawing certain conclusions, to be proclaimed in their review:
1933–1936
5:299
whereas a book like this, that isn’t a pot-boiler (though it is going to supply me for a while with spaghetti) or written to order, but has been growing up with me almost from childhood up, requires to be taken as a natural phenomenon, like the queer beasts at the Zoo, and not forced into accepted moulds. However, I can’t complain. People are most respectful and kind to my grey hairs; and besides I suspect that the book-trade makes it obligatory for critics to praise all books noticed at all. The old slashing invectives are an anachronism too, like war. Your old friend G.S. [across ] P.S. The photo in the N.Y. Times was taken in Oct. 1932. The one in the Saturday Review of Literature was taken in Sept. of the same year by an amateur.
To Charles Augustus Strong 18 February 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 18, 1936 Dear Strong It will be very nice to see you once more at the Aragno and we can then talk over the possibilities for the summer. I wish there were a place in Paris where I could feel at home, as in the old apartment. It is quite possible that I may go there for the summer, to some hotel in the region of the Palais Royale where I could have my déjèûner1 and then trust to going out for tea and a light supper—such as a beef sandwich and glass of beer at the Règence or at the Café d’Angleterre. Cory, too, might come and see us there. I say us, because I foresee that you will be driven to France again by the warm weather. As you see I feel no obligation to go to Cortina again. It is merely a safe place, where I know I can manage; but perhaps it is less suitable for a very old man, because there is only a continual shift of tourists and no suitable entertainments such as good music or resources such as doctors and hospitals. I seem to be all right again, but am not frequenting the Roma any longer, partly so as not to be tempted to eat too much, and partly because there, too, I had begun to feel too old for the milieu. I now have lunch—
5:300
The Letters of George Santayana
one dish of pasta or rice with cooked fruit or an omelette with cheese—in my room, before going out for my walk, usually to the Pincio. Fullerton has written to me after long years of silence (apropos of my novel) and I am going to ask him if he can suggest quarters where I might be comfortable in Paris.2 Perhaps his information might be of interest to you also. Yours ever G.S. 1
Lunch (French). William Morton Fullerton (1865–1952), member of the Harvard class of 1886, became a journalist and spent most of his life in Paris. He was a member of the international literary society. (See Marion Mainwaring’s Mysteries of Paris: The Quest for Morton Fullerton [Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2000].) 2
To Benjamin De Casseres 19 February 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Brooklyn)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Feb. 19, 1936 Dear Mr. De Casseres1 I have read your booklet on Exhibitionism with pleasure, sometimes bursting into a hearty laugh. You have the verve and the transcendental courage of the old American free lances, the Emersons, Thoreaus, Mark Twains, and Walt Whitmans.2 But is the substance of your doctrine other than the doctrine of Maya?3 For my part, I agree that we are of imagination all compact, and that our minds clothe or exhibit something else, that alone is active and lasting. You call it ourselves, I call it matter, others call it Brahma.4 Is there, functionally, any difference? Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Benjamin De Casseres (1873–1945), an American journalist, critic, essayist, and poet, wrote Exhibitionism: A New Theory of Evolution (New York: Blackstone Publishers, 1936). 2 Henry David Thoreau (1817–62), an American essayist, naturalist, and poet, he became a part of Emerson’s Transcendentalist circle. In 1845 Thoreau built a cabin at Walden Pond and lived there for over two years. (See his Walden, 1854.) Mark Twain, pen name of the American humorist Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835–1910), wrote masterly recreations of his boyhood in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (c.1884). Walt[er] Whitman (1819–92) an American poet, wrote on themes including love, death, nationalism, and democracy. His most famous work is Leaves of Grass (1855), which was praised by Emerson.
1933–1936
5:301
3 Maya is the powerful force that creates the cosmic illusion that the phenomenal world is real. 4 In Hinduism, the Absolute, or God conceived as entirely personal, is Brahma.
To David Page 19 February 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Feb. 19, 1936 Dear Mr. Page I feel like a dethroned monarch, there are so many about nowadays. My own Sovereign, King Alfonso, is living here in Rome, like me: but we do not exchange sighs. In fact, I am not clear how, having a Sovereign of my own (although deposed) I could loyally have become a sovereign of another country, even if you had really proposed to raise me to that eminence. Let us be satisfied, from this valley of tribulation, to salute the undisturbed summits of the always possible and the truly best. But please don’t put me down as a member of any party. I renounce them all. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 24 February 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Hotel Bristol, Rome Feb. 24, 1936
Dear Cory The $5,000 from the Book-of-the-Month Club arrived some time ago and are now duly credited to my London bank-account, which can now safely supply your allowance for two years. Other reverberations of the novel have been reaching me from America, pleasant enough in themselves but rather an impediment to work on other subjects, as if the afterglow of that sunset were keeping the stars from shining clearly. However, I peg away every morning: only my reading too, the newspapers (Italian only) and other things that I pick up, is not philosophical, and I have been led aside to compose a (very trenchant) section for Dominations & Powers
5:302
The Letters of George Santayana
on Commerce1 However, I think my separate army corps are all alive and advancing slowly towards the appointed positions. Heidegger, whose book has splendid broad margins, which I cover with notes, is a great stimulus on the subject of spirit. He has also some sections on truth, which I have just finished, but they are not good: at least, they are good only if the field is limited to the experience of the presence of truth. America has swallowed the novel whole without a qualm. The other day I got a fresh invitation from the President of Harvard College,2 by cable, to come and get a degree of Doctor of Letters: this, I say, to show ^ ^ that even after my novel they were not ashamed of me. And Mr. Scribner (in the absence of Mr. Wheelock whose health demanded a rest) wrote, on sending me the cheque for $5000, that “no novel published in the twenty odd years that I have been in the business has had such an enthusiastic reception from the press, which has showered it with praise without a dissenting note.” In the reviews I have seen, however, besides fault-finding in this or that,—one person says that the last hundred pages are poor stuff, and should merely be skimmed over; I must have been tired when I wrote them—besides such hap-hazard fault-finding there is a general timidity or perplexity. It is more than they dare to tackle, at least before knowing what other people will say. The letters from my friends, too, are a bit disappointing. They seem to be thinking of me, or of their own views on the same themes, without taking the book on its face value, and letting it speak for itself. Some letters from strangers, however, are ^^ fresher and more genuine. For instance, a man named Hamilton Bosso3 writes from North Carolina that he has “never read so wise and lovely and witty a book”. I like the choice of those three adjectives: the fun, especially, seems to have been missed by most readers. For me it is everything, or at least the sauce without which the rest wouldn’t go down. Yes, I have heard of Strong’s last new book.4 He says he is coming to Rome as usual in April, but is as undecided as I am about where to go for the summer. Yours affly G.S. P.S. Your question about “spiritual freedom” makes me wonder what direction your mind is taking now that you are comparatively free from pressure from Strong and me. Is your Catholic tendency dormant or reviving or outgrown? Have you some other lights, drawn perhaps from Bergson? I don’t expect that you will always agree with me simply because at the age of twenty your fancy was caught by my Scepticism &
1933–1936
5:303
Animal Faith. You then had less knowledge of rival doctrines, and were perhaps more impressed by the texture of my thought (as now by the texture of Bergson’s) —r— ather than by the general conception of things which I represent. Your natural sympathies, after all, may go elsewhere; but even in that case I should be sorry if you didn’t understand my views. Now, as to the matter of “spiritual freedom”, I don’t remember where I have used the words: the context would indicate what I had in mind. But in any case, the thing has nothing to do with the physical question of determinism or indeterminism in the genesis of events. Even “moral freedom” has nothing to do with it. Facing the matter afresh, I should say this: Existence being contingent intrinsically, the character of any event cannot be determined logically by that of previous events: every fact then is a part of the original groundless fact of existence. Yet any degree of regularity may be discovered in the ways of nature; and only in the measure in which such regularity exists is any science or prudence possible. Turning now to “moral freedom”, I should say that was relative to the psyche. When we can act and grow as our nature demands, we are morally free. When things or people or fatal commitments impede us, we are morally constrained, and not morally free agents. And “Spiritual freedom”, if distinguished from moral freedom, would mean liberation from all allegiance to what is private to each psyche, and love in perfect sympathy with the truth. Moral freedom is freedom from others, spiritual freedom is freedom from oneself. 1 Dominations has no section called “Commerce”; however, Book Second, Part Two, is entitled “Enterprise.” 2 James Bryant Conant. 3 Unidentified. 4 A Creed for Sceptics (London: Macmillan and Co. Ltd., 1936).
To José Sastre González 28 February 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Sastre Martín) Hotel Bristol, Roma 28 de Febrero, 1936
Querido Pepe,1 A su tiempo recibí la carta de Eduardo,2 firmada por todos vosotros, y ahora la tuya del 22 del actual. Celebio que esteis todos buenos y contentos en lo que cabe en este valle de elecciones;3 creo que mientras
5:304
The Letters of George Santayana
duren éstas no habrá verdadera tranquilidad, porque es imposible que al alternar los partidos cambie y vuelva a cambiar la verdadera constitución de pais. Así resulta todo confusión y proyectos frus[illegible ]trados. Tambien he recibido muchos números del ABC4 que he leido con gusto—no íntegros, naturalmente, pero lo bastante para darme una idea de lo que ocurre en España, que es poco mas o menos lo de siempre. Ahora hay mucho sport y votan las mujeres; sucede lo mismo en casi todas partes. Las italianas no votan todavia, pero marchan en forma de soldados, con música pero sin fusiles. Yo lo paso aqui muy bien sin sentir que haya guerra ni “sanciones,” hasta que leo el periódico. Por muchos años estuve suscrito a un diario inglés, pero ahora lo he dejado y no leo mas que periódicos italianos; asi no me aturden las opiniones contrarias y vivo mas tranquilo. Mi novela por fín se ha publicado, y si alguno de la familia es aficionado al inglés, os mandaré un ejemplar. Don Antonio Marichalar, un literato elegante que hace tei —iempo se interesa en mis cosas, dice que quiere traducirla, pero —t— ienes son mas de 700 páginas, y dudo que tenga paciencia para llevar a cabo ese trabajo, que creo sería en sí bastante difícil. Tambien en los Estados Unidos hay elecciones este año, y poca seguridad. Menos mal si sigue la situación actual y no da el dollar otro bajón. Tantos recuerdos cariñosos a toda la familia y un abrazo de tu tio Jorge 1 Translation: Dear Pepe, I received Eduardo’s letter in good time, signed by all of you, and now yours of the 22nd of this month. I am glad that you are all well and happy, as far as that is possible in this valley of elections. I think that until they are over there will be no real peace, because it is not possible for the real constitution of the country to change and change again while the parties take turns. That way everything turns into confusion and frustrated plans. I also have received many issues of ABC which I have read with pleasure—not each and every word, of course, but enough to have an idea of what’s going on in Spain, which is more or less the same old thing. Now, there is a lot of sports and women vote; the same thing is happening almost everywhere. Italian women don’t vote yet but they march like soldiers with music but without rifles. I am having a very nice time without being aware that there is a war or “sanctions” until I read the paper. For many years I had a subscription to an English daily, but now I have given it up and only read the Italian papers, so I am not mixed up by contrary opinions and I live more peacefully. My novel has finally been published, and, if anyone in the family likes to read English, I will send you a copy. Don Antonio Marichalar, an elegant man of letters who has been interested in my things for some time, says that he wants to translate it, but
1933–1936
5:305
it is more than 700 pages long, and I doubt that he has the patience to see the job through to the end, which I think would be rather difficult in itself. In the United States, too, there are elections this year and little security. It will be a good thing if the present situation continues and the dollar doesn’t take another sudden drop. Many fond regards to the whole family and an embrace from your uncle 2 Elder son of José and Isabel, Eduardo Sastre Martín (b. 1915) was their third child. 3 This was a time of political turmoil in Spain leading to the outbreak of July’s civil war. In February 1936 the general elections were won by the Popular Front, a coalition comprising several different political groups. The legislation and constitution of the Spanish Republic was once more vigorously enforced. However, the forces of conservatism and reaction in Spain, led by the Fascists, were deliberately formenting violent disorder. 4 A Spanish periodical.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 3 March 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Hotel Bristol, Rome March 3, 1936
Dear Cory The enclosed cuttings, if you haven’t already seen them, will give you an idea of the extent to which that little bank-account of mine is destined to profit in the near future. My nephew—such is human nature—wants to gather all my royalties under his wing: of course, he says, I can ask for them, if I wish. No, sir, I have replied. My earned income is coming to me without any supervision by officious nephews. Now I write this not merely as a sort of boyish boast or sfogo, but because it concerns you. I can very well blow in those $5,000 already received, since much more is to come presently. Considering this, and the fact that Strong wants to go to Paris in the summer, I am thinking of going there too, about June 1st (if there isn’t a war) for four months, and to take an apartment in a hotel (perhaps the Savoy in the rue de Rivoli) like the one I have here, with a sitting room, and freedom to have my meals there, à la carte, or to go out for them, as I choose. Then I shall merely have to get into the train here, and out of it 24 hours later in Paris, and the same on my return, without otherwise at all changing my mode of life. I think this is perhaps the best solution possible for the question, What shall I do in summer? Answer: The same as in winter, only in Paris instead of in Rome. Both Strong and I of course hope that you will come to Paris to see us. f cou— rse pay your travelling expenses and raise your allowance a I will —o—
5:306
The Letters of George Santayana
little for the occasion; but as to how long you can bear to be away from golf (is golf played in Paris?) and whether you prefer to be by yourself or would like to be at my hotel, as you were here at the Bristol last year,—all that is for you to decide. No need of deciding now: only I want you to have that idea in mind. “Scrutiny” I believe in to have my article in this March number, which ought to arrive in a day or two.1 I naturally wish to keep my copy, as I have no other of my article; but as soon as I am sure that it has appeared, I will write to have your copy sent from Cambridge direct. Yours affly G.S. 1
“Tragic Philosophy”.
To William Lyon Phelps 16 March 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Beinecke) Hotel Bristol, Rome March 16, 1936
Dear Billy Yes, of course, you may print my letter;1 not that I remember what I wrote, because my memory disdains to record recent events, but I can trust you to leave out any indiscreet passages. For instance, you mustn’t say who Jim Darnley is copied from, not only because it is too soon to pillory the dead, but because it is only the young and intimate Russell that is reproduced, not the elderly man with his politics and his matrimonial difficulties. His (third) wife recognized him, because a lover is always young, but hardly anyone else now living would see the likeness. There is something which I probably didn’t say in my letter that I wish you would discuss someday in your “As I like It” articles.2 An important element in the tragedy of Oliver (not in his personality, for he was no poet) is drawn from the fate of a whole string of Harvard poets in the 1880’s and 1890’s—Sanborn, Philip Savage, Hugh McCullough, Trumbull Stickney, and Cabot Lodge: also Moody,3 although he lived a little longer and made some impression, I believe, as a playwright. Now all those friends of mine, Stickney especially, of whom I was very fond, were visibly killed by the lack of air to breathe. People individually were kind and appreciative to them, as they were to me: but the system was deadly, and they hadn’t any alternative tradition (as I had) to fall back upon: and of
1933–1936
5:307
course, as I believe I said of Oliver in my letter, they hadn’t the strength of a great intellectual hero who can stand alone. I have been trying to think whether I have ever known any “good” people such as are not to be found in my novel. You will say “There’s me and Anabel:4 why didn’t you put us into your book, to brighten it up a little?” Ah, you are not novelesque enough: and I can’t remember anybody so terribly good in Dickens except the Cheerybell Brothers,5 and really, if I had put anyone like that in they would have said I was “vicious”, as they say I am in depicting Mrs. Alden. But Irma was what I think good: she wasn’t sillier than we all are, except that we keep our silliness quiet. And Oliver was very good: I don’t think you like good people really, only sweet people—like Anabel and you! G.S. 1
16 February 1936. William Lyon Phelps wrote “As I Like It,” a book column for Scribner’s Magazine. 3 Thomas Parker Sanborn (1865–89), a member of Santayana’s Harvard class of 1886, committed suicide. Santayana published two obituaries of Sanborn: the first in The Harvard Monthly 8 (March 1889): 35, and the second in the Harvard College Class of 1886 Secretary’s Report No. VII, Twenty-fifth Anniversary, 1911 (Cambridge: University Press, [1911?]): 200–201. See Persons, 187–88 and 191. Philip Henry Savage (1868–99) was a Boston poet whose two small works First Poems and Fragments (Boston: Copeland and Day, 1895) and Poems (Copeland and Day, 1898) were considered important for their simplicity and lyrical character. Hugh McCullough (c. 1872–1902), a member of the Harvard class of 1894, wrote Quest of Herakles and Other Poems (1894). Joseph Trumbull Stickney (1874–1904) was a Swiss-born American poet and dramatist. After graduating from Harvard in 1895 Stickney studied at the Sorbonne and was the first American to receive that institution’s Doctorat des Lettres. He returned to Harvard to teach until his death. George Cabot Lodge (1873–1909) graduated with the Harvard class of 1895. 4 Annabel Hubbard (d. 1939) married William Lyon Phelps in 1892. 5 Charles Dickens (1812–70), the English novelist, is known for his direct style of writing, his remarkable descriptions of character, and his sentimental crusades against social evils. Santayana misspelled Cheeryble brothers, characters in the novel Nicholas Nickleby. Dickens’s other works include Oliver Twist, Bleak House, and A Tale of Two Cities. 2
5:308
The Letters of George Santayana
To C. L. Shelby 18 March 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Virginia)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, March 18, 1936 Dear Dr. Shelby1 I can’t very well send you The Last Puritan because I have here only one copy, with my corrections, etc., and as you ask for an autograph at the same time, I am sending you instead my very latest book,2 in which, especially in the last paper and in the one on the Unknowable, you may find material for one or two sermons. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Unidentified. Obiter.
2
To Mr. Gross 20 March 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Unknown)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, March 20, 1936 Dear Mr. Gross1 The reason for calling Oliver the “last puritan” is given in the Prologue. He had reached the ultimate phase of puritanism, when it condemns itself. That doesn’t kill it, but it kills the man who has it. Of course, most modern descendants of the Puritans, with some remnant of superstitious conscience, become ordinary business men and hardly less robust socially than other people—more robust than their historical enemies the Anglican Catholics. But Oliver is meant not to be a puritan by accident only — but or by inheritance, but by nature. And he “peters” out because his austerity rejects the ordinary religious and moral shams that satisfy most idealistic souls, while at the same time he can’t identify himself with the life of the world. He is like the rich young man in the Gospel who turns away sadly: not in this case because he wasn’t ready to sell all he had and give to the poor, but because he found no Christ to follow.
1933–1936
5:309
It is very true that the reviews (at least those I have seen) are not wellrounded or fairly focussed. Although many of them, like yours, are extremely flattering. The book is too complex, and some of the strains in it not easy to discuss openly. But I wanted at least to suggest everything that had seemed to me to contribute to the dissolution of this moral type. Yours sincerely, GSantayana 1
Unidentified.
To Charles Augustus Strong 25 March 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, Rome March 25, 1936 Dear Strong m They sent me Perry’s W— James when it came out, asking for a review to be used for advertising the book; but I disliked the constraint that such a proposal involved, and in any case I wasn’t conscious of anything new to say. I looked at the first volume and read most of the second, especially the letters to and from Bergson. What a contrast in tone and in sincerity! I sent the volumes to Mrs. Toy (who said they were too dear for her) but one was lost in the Christmas post. No: don’t bring your extra copy: but I shall be glad to hear what your impressions have been on reviewing James’s life and work as a whole. As to my health, I think it is normal; but I seem to have passed into a new phase of old age, rather more passive than the previous one. I eat and drink less, also walk less, but the days slip by as if there were fewer hours in them, and I enjoy both reading and writing more than ever, although I am probably slower in both operations than I used to be. I have been feasting on a lot of German. Now I am deep in Thomas Mann’s Zauberberg.1 It is all about consumption, but I feel as if I had actually lived at Davos and known all those disgusting people. When you get my Obiter Scripta, most of which you have seen before, do read the Preface. It is short. Yours ever G.S.
5:310
The Letters of George Santayana
1 [Paul] Thomas Mann (1875–1955), a German philosophical novelist, won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929. Der Zauberberg (translated as The Magic Mountain) is a twovolume work first published in 1924. In this work Mann depicts the culture and politics of Europe in the early twentieth century through the lives of those in a tuberculosis sanatorium.
To Cyril Coniston Clemens 26 March 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Duke)
Hotel Bristol, Rome March 26, 1936 My dear Clemens1 I am overwhelmed by your praises of The Last Puritan and the offer of the Mark Twain Medal. Unfortunately, if the offer involves a journey to Saint Louis, my old age and other sad attributes will prevent me from receiving it. However, in any case, please accept my heartfelt thanks Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Cyril Coniston Clemens (1902–99), a cousin of Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain), founded the International Mark Twain Society and began publishing the Mark Twain Quarterly in 1936.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 26 March 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome March 26, 1936 Dear Cory Doctors’ bills are always an extra, and if you are seriously advised to have your tonsils cut out, I shall be glad to pay for the operation. The only trouble with your asking for more money is a certain feeling which you seem to have yourself, or at least which your ways suggest to me, that you sometimes find yourself unexpectedly at the end of your rope. That is unfortunate, because it discourages the hope that you may ever economize a little and make yourself independent.1 Now, for instance, if I get the large sums which seem to be involved in the success of The Last Puritan, I might transfer a little capital to your name, in lieu of a legacy
1933–1936
5:311
which I can’t very well leave you. But of course, if you spent the capital, you would deprive yourself of the interest, and nothing would be gained in the end. Something might even be lost, if you had acquired habits or undertaken responsibilities that afterwards you couldn’t live up to. It is only this feeling of insecurity in respect to you that is unpleasant. As to a little more or less money, at this moment, there is no difficulty, and I am even glad that you should enjoy yourself, when I have no longer any special use myself for this windfall. My namesake Giorgio Santillana was here the other day and said something that pleased me very much:2 that he had read The Realm of Matter and found that, though expressed in the language of a generation before his own, it — exdefended exactly his own opinions: whereas when he read Scepticism and Animal Faith he had not felt he agreed. This is one more case of what I like to think and to see confirmed (it is also confirmed by the novel succeeding so well in America): that people like in my books whatever is on their own subject, and dislike what treats of things not in their own sphere. That is, they recognize the truth when they know the truth, but don’t, find at all what they [across ] wish to believe about things of which they are ignorant. My namesake is a scientific man: ergo, etc. G. S. 1
After receiving this letter, Cory decided against the operation (see Years, 169). Giorgio de Santillana (b. 1902), an Italian philosopher, came to the United States in 1936 and became a naturalized citizen in 1945. A philosopher of science, Santillana taught at the University of Rome and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 2
To Bonamy Dobrée 28 March 1936 • Rome, Italy C
(MS: Leeds)
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W. Rome, March 28, 1936 Dear Sir, Here is my essay on Berkeley. In revising it I have felt some qualms about its quality, it is so exclusively philosophical and so much my own. But you ran this risk in inviting a professional philosopher to take part in your survey from Anne to Victoria,1 which I suppose will be generally picturesque. However, perhaps a strain of something different may not be unwelcome for the sake of variety. Will you kindly verify the quotation on page 21 of my manuscript? I had to trust my memory: for as I told you, I am obliged to work without
5:312
The Letters of George Santayana
books of reference; and this is also the reason for the absence of more quotations and a closer bugging of the text in my paper. I am sorry, too, not to send it to you in type, and in better shape, but the lady who used to do my type-writing hasn’t returned to Rome this year, and I am reduced to my oldfashioned pen. Yours very truly GSantayana 1 Anne Stuart (1665–1714), daughter of James II, was queen of England from 1702 until 1714. Her reign was marked by support of Protestants. She had no children who lived to adulthood and appointed George I as her successor. Victoria (1819–1901) was queen of England from 1837 until her death. Her reign, called the Victorian era, marked the return of dignity, virtue, and honor to the crown and was a time of increased industrialization, of general prosperity, and of English pride.
To Robert Shaw Barlow 29 March 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome March 29, 19361 Dear Bob I have your two excellent letters, and feel as if our old acquaintance were renewed after forty years, without any loss of sympathy. Your first letter especially, in which you describe your mode of life, surprised and interested me, because that is not the way in which I should have pictured you as living in your old age, but rather the way I should have chosen for myself, if I had stayed in Boston and been free to live there after my own fashion. A bachelor apartment in a pleasant position, opening conveniently into a club, and relations kept up naturally with young people, who are agreeable anywhere, but in America, at least in my time, the only people with whom one could establish frank and unprejudiced communication. And now the younger generation seem to be better informed and better spoken than the average of our own time. Of course you and I and Swelly Bangs and a few others that you can easily name had a little ballast, social and intellectual, to start with, and if we were not altogether dragooned into the marching regiment, we could preserve a little freedom and freshness of mind, even in middle life: although for my part I feel that the last fifteen years of my life in e/ America were a dry season, a time of camping in the desert, with very little manna falling from the sky. Besides,
1933–1936
5:313
anywhere a man between 35 and [illegible ]50 is, spiritually, under a cloud, as I have made Jim explain in the novel. The only side of your life now that I should have arranged differently, if I had been the person concerned, would have been your professional work and your office hours. These I should have spent at home, as I do here, over my books and papers. But I think it was lucky that I got away and renewed my contacts with Spain and England. Italy, which I like even better, is only a stage setting. I came here too late to make friends: I didn’t need or want society any longer; and the people I see are almost all travelling Americans, or Anglo-Americans living in Italy. As to the novel, and the originals of the characters, you are really almost in a better position to judge than I am myself. I have lived so long with Oliver and Mario and the rest that they have an automatic existence within me. They do and say what they choose, and I merely take note, as in a dream. Naturally, this probably makes them all versions of myself: not only am I the substance of their being, like the author of a play, but I am also the actor who speaks their lines. Even in assuming the most different characters, something of the ventriloquist remains his own. You say Oliver is most like me: he was meant to be most unlike me, but only in his physical and moral character: in the quality of his mind, he is what I am or should have been in his place. This is true also of his father, of Jim, and of Jim’s father; and it is true even of some of the women, such as Irma and Aunt Caroline.2 On the other hand, I think there is some exaggeration in the criticism made by some people that the characters are not living and have no individual way of speaking. They may not talk as people actually do: but they talk in their own way, generally, if not always: and if people opened the book in 100 years they wouldn’t think the language not characteristic enough. T / And they would understand it. Yours as always G.S. 1
In the 29 March 1936 to George Sturgis, Santayana says that he wrote this letter yesterday. 2 In Puritan Caroline is Peter Alden’s half sister. She marries Erasmus Van de Weyer, a prosperous banker.
5:314
The Letters of George Santayana
To George Sturgis 29 March 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton) Hotel Bristol, Rome March 29, 1936
Dear George Mr. Young’s1 letter is very clear, and I see the lien that the government has upon the royalties of a person in my position. I am—or my publishers are—protected by an American copyright: but for that, anybody might pirate my books and pocket the profits (when there are any). The privilege of cashing vast sums in the case of a best-seller must therefore be acknowledged with thanks and with an adequate contribution for poor dear Uncle Sam in his always temporary difficulties. Very well: I am keeping an exact account, in dollars, of all I receive from America, not through my letter of credit. I have even found the stumps of the missing cheques for last year, so that in case of need I could supply a list of all my receipts for several years past, though they amount to very little. For the novel, so far, I have received exactly $5,000; my half of the sum paid to Scribner by the Book-of-the Month Club. I mentioned the $2500 for my review of Russell only because it was my most recent article, and a sort of test case for the principle at stake: but nothing was said of future rights to the composition, and I should feel free to reproduce it, or parts of it, in a future publication. These small sums might therefore be as well counted in with the larger ones that come from publishers. There is nothing in my contract with Scribner, as far at least as I remember, about the duration of copyrights after the author’s death. I always supposed that was a matter regulated by law, and have never seen any reference to it in any of my contracts with publishers. It is a matter that interests you rather than me. I am not a novelist writing for money, and The Last Puritan is, as the title-page asserts, a Memoir in the form of a novel, or (as I might have said instead) an imaginary biography. The events are not arranged to make a story, but to be such as would occur in the course of a young man’s life, in Oliver’s position. The books I am still at work on are two volumes more to complete my system, a book on politics called “Dominations & Powers”, and my autobiography or Memoirs.2 I don’t expect to finish them all, but will do the system first. I don’t need more money.
1933–1936
5:315
[across] Bob Barlow has written me two very interesting letters, to which I replied yesterday. Yours affy G.S. 1 Benjamin Loring Young was associated with the firm of Ropes, Gray, Boyden, and Perkins of Boston. John Hall Wheelock, a cousin of Young’s first wife, was also a personal friend of Young. 2 Persons.
To John Hall Wheelock 30 March 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Hotel Bristol, Rome March 30, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock th I have your letters of the 10th & 17– of this month, and your cable asking me to disregard another letter, of the 21–st, not yet received, and to take no action regarding the United Feature Syndicate. So long as you ask me to do nothing, you will always easily persuade me. As to Mr. Lee Keedick1 and lecture tours, you are right in thinking that such a thing is out of the question, and I will leave you to reply to him as you may think proper. As to the communication from Ropes, Gray, Boyden, & Perkins of Boston, in the name of my nephew George Sturgis, concerning my royalties and proposed will, I have heard directly from my nephew and given him my views on the subject. As he and his sister, Mrs. Raymond Bidwell, are my only heirs, they are naturally interested in the question of what will happen when I die, not to me but to my money. My nephew has asked me whether your — with—— me contracts with me contain a provi^ ^ ^ ^ sion as to the length of time during which the heirs of an author may profit by the sale of his works. I have replied that I remember no such provision, and had always supposed the matter to be settled by law. How does it stand? As to making a will, I have attempted it once or twice, and with my Spanish nationality and American & English connections the thing is so confused and confusing that I am convinced that it is better, even for my heirs, that I should die intestate. After all, the matter concerns only the margin of my property; the main part of it (which comes
5:316
The Letters of George Santayana
partly from my mother and indirectly from the Sturgis family) has already been disposed of by a deed of trust, in favour of my nephew and his sister, after providing for some other gifts and legacies. A house that I owned in Spain has been disposed of also; and the royalties for books, and my ^ ^ bank account in London, are practically the only assets that will remain as it were in the air, when I have disappeared. I think there will be no great difficulty in proving that, whatever rights these may involve, should pass to George Sturgis and his sister. I continue to hear flattering things about The Last Puritan, and from the most various quarters. It is gratifying and a little surprising. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Unidentified.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 1 April 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Hotel Bristol, Rome April 1, 1936
Dear Cory Your article in The Criterion strikes me much more favourably than it did last year when you showed me the typewritten copy.1 If you haven’t made any changes, my mood must have become fairer and more appreciative. It now seems to me to read very pleasantly; it is modest but firm, simple in style without vulgarity, and independent without being badtempered. I find only one misrepresentation, where I have marked a cross. In substance I agree with the Scholastic analysis, but need other terms, so as to state the matter without the Socratic-Aristotelian presuppositions2 in general philosophy which imply a conceptual structure in the world and a limited number of standard genera & species, and universals generally for the intellect to recognize. That is why “intuition”, in my statements would take the place of both sense and intellect, in so far as these are actually realized in consciousness; while “intent” would take the place of I don’t know exactly what assurance that the object faced not only exists but possesses in itself (you say “vaguely”, but why vaguely?) the qualities given in perception. This “vagueness” is ascribed only in view of an assumed conventional standard of imagination or of material
1933–1936
5:317
form. The feeling of being alive, of being oppressed, of enduring (as Bergson would say) is not vague in itself, although words cannot very well articulate it; and so too the extreme complexity and evanescence of the datum of intuition, when we are not interested in what is going on, does not in the least, of itself, turn that vagueness into more than a given essence. There is, besides, the object of intent: fundamentally the whole ^ ^ world in which the spirit finds itself: but this is not the special object of ^ ^ any particular sense: it is sensible per accidens when the senses awake to its presence, or rather (for sense has not a separate spirit within it) when the spirit awakes to its presence under the stimilus of sense. I think all consciousness is intellectual: the sub-intellectual flux is purely material and only potentially conscious. Your “vague” object of sense is not, I think, a psychological, but a physiological, reality. At the end you seem to be sorry that, having reduced idealism sceptically to absurdity, I shouldn’t simply go back to the conventions from which the idealists started. Those conventions, as stated by the Scholastics, are contrary to naturalism: that is why they led to idealism as soon as criticism was applied to them. I have tried to profit by that experience and to state commonsense beliefs with more circumspection, so as not to be forced to abandon them by the treacherous elements of grammar and moralism which the Socratic School introduced into philosophy. Yours affly G.S. [across] P.S. I send you some English stamps, useless to me, and my review of Russell’s last book with The Criterion. 1 “The Later Philosophy of Mr. Santayana,” The Criterion 15 (April 1936): 379–92. Santayana took seriously a few technical objections against his theory of knowledge in Cory’s essay. It was the first time Cory had questioned Santayana’s doctrine in public (Years, 170). 2 The Scholastics seek to answer the questions of similarity, difference, and constancy among things. Borrowing heavily from Aristotle, these questions typically are answered by reference to a prime substance or being and its actualization into particular forms.
5:318
The Letters of George Santayana
To Henrietta Auchmity Sturgis Ingersoll 1 April 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Unknown) Rome, April 1, 1936
1
Dear Rita Not only do I remember who you are but I have a vivid image of just how you looked in the fashions of the 1880’s. You, with the rest of your family, were most important figures in our household when I was a boy: and you must consider that I was distinctly a home boy, living (except for day-dreams) on what was said and thought in my family. Susana was the link with Society and the outer world; also for me with religion and architecture: the latter because she had a beau named Johnny P. (that is, Putnam) who was an architect, and set her reading The Stones of Venice and other books (from the Boston Public Library, for we were ratty poor) about the beauties of Gothic:2 all of which passed out of her mind in a few years, but stuck to me, and made me “aesthetic”. Now Susana—you may remember it—after your father’s death, went to stay with you for some time in Philadelphia. She became attached to all of you, because she was warm-hearted and you were warm-hearted too as well as interesting; and she came home full of anecdotes that entertained us for a long time: for instance there was a Cuban who came to see her and would spit on the carpet, and the question was whether, if a spitoon were provided for him and placed by his chair, it would put him to shame, or encourage his vice. Susana also came home loaded with things more substantial than anecdotes, namely, a trunk-ful of your mother’s beautiful dresses, discarded for mourning, and destined to fit out poor Susana with her best clothes for years. I remember those dresses, and the transformations they suffered, until the last shred of them disappeared. The other active member of our household in those days (at 302 Beacon Street) was Robert:3 and not only had he been almost a member of your family for two years, 1867–1869, but he retained all his life a special admiration for you personally. I don’t know whether he ever made love to you, probably he didn’t dare, but put you on a pedestal: you were his ideal of what woman should be, when she is good. I am not sure that he hadn’t also a second ideal of woman, more approachable and easier to realize; but that didn’t obscure, on the contrary it exalted, your image in his mind.
1933–1936
5:319
The other, silent but omnipotent, power in our house was my mother; and though she didn’t distinguish you particularly from your brothers and sisters, she had a rooted loyalty and affection for your father, and everything belonging to him had a sort of halo in her mind. I wonder how much you heard of her, and if you ever saw her. When her first husband, your uncle George, died in Manila, his affairs were not in a prosperous condition, and she was left with four young children (the youngest, Victor, died on the journey back to Boston, where he had been born during my mother’s first visit to New England)4 and hardly enough to live on: whereupon your father, who was then in China and a bachelor, gave her an additional $10,000 (then a large sum) to enable her to be a little more comfortable. It is very curious, but that money is now mine, and was the nucleus of my little peculium5 enabling me to live independently. For when my mother married a second time,6 she put in trust for her three Sturgis children,7 the property left by their father, but your father’s $10,000 she kept for herself, and ultimately left to me. The continuity of the fund was perhaps merely ideal, and in the later years it had grown a great deal: but that was my mother’s way of counting, and I retain it, and like to think that I am still profiting by your father’s generosity of so many years ago. I was once in your house—is it your old family house, I wonder, that you are still living in?—for a week in 1876, during the Centennial Exhibition. Robert, my brother, took me, and Russell Sturgis 3rd brought me back to Boston.8 The house was otherwise empty, as it was midsummer, but I remember the rooms very well, and also the Exposition. I don’t know if I have ever been in Philadelphia again—perhaps once in passing; but as I was tied most of my life to Cambridge, and spent my vacations in Europe, you and I never came across each other. I am sorry. Maisie is the one of you of whom, in late years, I have heard most,9 because of the Potters: and one of her boys has come to see me here in Rome in my old age. But it all comes to the same thing in the end. The other day I sent a copy of my novel to Mrs. Bob Potter—I always sent them my books in Bob’s time, and I thought she might be interested in this one, especially as there is something of Bob in one or two of the characters; but I haven’t heard from her. Most of my friends are dead, as well as all my immediate family, and I live so retired, though quite contented, that I don’t even hear of people’s deaths. You ask whether I first went to America with my mother or my father. The latter. It was on the 4th of July, 1872, that we sailed in the Samaria,
5:320
The Letters of George Santayana
3000 tons (I mention her in the novel) for Boston. I am sending you a pamphlet containing a sort of autobiography, in the first part of which some of these facts are mentioned. The rest is philosophy. Thank you for wishing to renew our affectionate cousinship. It is a pleasant and non-obligatory bond. Yours as ever GSantayana 1 Henrietta Auchmity Sturgis (b. 1864) was the daughter of Susan Brimmer Inches (d. 1900) and Robert Shaw Sturgis (1824–76), the brother of Santayana’s mother’s first husband. Henrietta married Charles Edward Ingersoll in 1885. 2 In her youth in Boston, Susan was interested in John Putnam, an architect. [D. C.] The Stones of Venice by John Ruskin (1819–1900) was originally published in three volumes between 1851 and 1853. In these volumes the English author and critic developed the principle that art and architecture are based on national and individual integrity and morality. 3 Santayana’s half brother. 4 James Victor Sturgis (1856–58), the last child of Santayana’s mother by her first husband, was born in the Tremont House Hotel in Boston. 5 Savings (Latin). 6 Josefina Borrás Sturgis married Agustín Ruiz de Santayana (d. 1893) in 1962 in Madrid. 7 Susan, Josephine, and Robert. 8 Russell Sturgis 3d (1856–99) was the eldest son of Susan Codman Wells (d. 1862) and Russell Sturgis (1831–99), Howard Overing Sturgis’s brother. 9 Mary “Maisie” Howard Sturgis (1872–1944), the recipient’s sister, married Edgar Thomson Scott in 1898.
To John Hall Wheelock 2 April 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Hotel Bristol, Rome April 2, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock Your plan of publishing a limited edition of my collected works seems to me premature.1 No doubt my age and the quantity of what I have written justifies anyone in crying: Basta! and drawing a sharp line across the account, ready to sum up the total. Yet in fact the total isn’t there yet: there are various things I mean to write not yet written, and various things written not yet published. They may not prove worth writing or worth ^ ^
1933–1936
5:321
preserving, but one can’t tell beforehand. One of my oldest friends wanted me to burn up the manuscript of The Last Puritan.2 So that, for the sake of completeness and of the documentary value of the collection, you ought to wait, at least, until I am dead. Even then, there may remain a few trifles for some antiquary to unearth later. That would remove the possibility of signing my name to the 750 first volumes; although in itself, if the sheets could have come to me unbound in a moderate parcel, I think the manual labour of writing my name so many times would not have scared me. I rather like manual labour, if I may do it when the Spirit moves. On the other hand, the twelve prefaces that you would like me to supply for the twelve volumes would be an exacting task and would drive me back, when I wish to go forward. I am tired of myself, of my old self, and though it may be an illusion, as when old men tell you their oldest joke with the greatest gusto, I want to see fresh aspects of things, and of things as remote as possible from the old “problems”. For these reasons I feel that I don’t want to undertake any systematic self-criticism of that sort. If I ever get to my Autobiography, of which some fragments already exist, I may naturally reconsider the occasions of my various books, and pass some contrite judgements upon them; but that must come of itself, and in its own time, not as a task under pressure Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 The Triton edition of The Works of George Santayana was published by Scribner’s in fifteen volumes (1936–40). There were originally to be 750 sets of this limited edition; the final contract with Scribner’s states that there will be a maximum of 900 sets. 2 C. A. Strong.
To Charles P. Davis 3 April 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Hotel Bristol, Rome April 3rd 1936
Dear Davis I didn’t send you my novel because I felt that you wouldn’t like it. It’s not Catholic enough—really quite pagan and desolating in its background—and then the moral problem for poor Oliver is quite different from what I expect troubled you when you were young. Your difficulties were plain human difficulties and choices between clear-cut contrasted
5:322
The Letters of George Santayana
opinions; whereas Oliver is a born (and bred) transcendentalist, thinks always from the pure ego outwards, and never can get outwards very far. Then his feelings and passions are mixed up horribly, and helpless: I was going to say “impotent”, but that would be misleading, because he was far from impotent physically, only emotionally and morally inhibited, and without the courage of his inclinations. He was too tied up ever to find out clearly what these inclinations were. That was why he petered out. Meantime he behaved very well, was loyal and generous (as all my American friends have been) and had a great many noble thoughts: but even his thoughts didn’t cohere into anything specific. Perhaps, with your adopted Catholic surroundings, you don’t come upon people of this sort, but my life has been spent among them, and that was what I set out to describe. Perhaps there are other incidental things in the book that rub you the wrong way, or leave you cold. But I assure you that the texture of the book is good, and that you would like it if you weren’t expecting something else. It certainly is remarkable how people have taken to it in America. I suppose in part it is curiousity to see how “high-brow” experience expresses itself: but in part it must be that they, or some of them, see the fun in the book, and are really entertained. It isn’t a professional novel, with the events arranged to make a story. It is just a rambling biography, tossed along from one incomplete situation to another, as in real life. I meant it to be that. The world is not a tragedy or a comedy: it is a flux. I have already got a lot of money (from the Book-of-the-Month Club) and expect more soon from Scribner. I am thinking of going to Paris in the summer to blow some of it in—unless there is a war. But I think not. The talkers will continue to talk and the doers to do, and we outsiders will be allowed to look on and amuse ourselves. I had a sort of dream about you the other night. You were very tall and thin, dressed in black, and your hair white, and you were bending over and scurrying away because you had to go to the sodality meeting of your patron Saints.—What patron Saints?—The Holy Guardian Angels, of course. Aren’t they bookkeepers?—I was going to ask you to look me up in the ledger and see if I had overdrawn my account, but you had vanished. Naturally, naturally, I said to myself: they keep a double entry, and he’s slipped away by the back door.—How silly one’s mind is, if it gets on the loose! Yours sincerely GSantayana
1933–1936
To Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz 8 April 1936 • Rome, Italy
5:323
(MS: Brooklyn)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, April 8, 1936 Dear Mr. Buchler & Mr. Schwartz The inconsistencies about brackets in the notes to Obiter Scripta are inconspicuous and won’t annoy anybody—at least not me. True that I didn’t supply a translation, or make one of my own, for the long quotations from Proust: but that was because “Life & Letters”, in those days, was a review meant for people sure to read French: and besides, I was anxious that nobody should accuse me of doctoring the text so as to make it coincide more closely with my own view. But in this collection, meant principally for students, the translation is needed (“students” don’t know much) and you indicate that the translation is not mine, which is the important point. I have noticed only one misprint in the text. On p. 216, 3rd line, “depicting” should be “deputing”. I leave it to you to have this correction made, if there should be any reprints. The book pleases me the more, the more I think of it, and I hear much praise of it from competent quarters, but we can’t expect it to sell like The Last Puritan, which has somehow appealed to the public in an unexpected way. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 9 April 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome April 9, 1936 Dear Cory I don’t like to let this question about sense & intellect drop altogether: not that I mind a clear disagreement, but that I think in this case there is less disagreement than confusion of terms. As to Catholic implications,
5:324
The Letters of George Santayana
one way or the other, they are not important. The source of what you call the Catholic view is really Aristotle and quite pagan, except that the early Fathers who where Platonists may have worked out christian doctrine in those terms. If you look at the De Anima1 you will see that there is no literary psychology, no clear notion of consciousness, no scepticism. It is straight natural history, interpreted dialectically. Sensation = sensitivity in the animal. Its object is the real object in nature, and each sense answers to some special property of that object. In potentia the sensitivity and the objective property are left vague: they are just potentialities; but in the act of smelling, e.g. the smell of the thing and the sensation in the psyche are one and identical. They are a “given essence”. That the object is first posited as existing, and then perhaps distinguished as emitting just that smell, is assumed but not discussed. So in respect to intellect. This is the power to recognize types or Platonic ideas, and the degree in which actual things may come up to them. It is a moral and grammatical faculty. The forms are (not perfectly) exemplified in nature; and the capacity to conceive them exists (undeveloped) in man: but when a perfect thought responds to a perfect thing, that perfection is realized in the thought that thinks that idea. The proper objects of intellect are universals in the mind of God; the proper objects of sense are particular bodies, wearing this or that sensible quality. Now for a sceptic brought up on modern philosophy all that —is is not wrong, certainly, but irrelevant to the burning question. There is immediate experience (call it sense or intuition or thought, as you will) and there are objects of belief. Both the Aristo te lian sensation and the Aristotelian ^ ^ intellect, in act, are moments of immediate experience, yielding an essence to intuition; and both, when considered by the naturalist from outside, may realize in intuition the qualities or forms actually possessed by external things. But belief is required to reveal this, in either case, to the spirit. Such belief exists from the first; even precedes, virtually, the act of intuition: that is granted. But the belief is right only pragmatically: descriptively and dogmatically it is wrong; so that the whole Aristotelian view is mythological. The objects exist, as the sun exists; but they have no such essences, as the sun is not Apollo. Now I am conscious of some confusion on my part, at least in my letters (which are not text-books) between intellect and intent. In contrast to intuition meaning is an act of intelligence: it is an act of self-transcendence, and places the mind in cognitive relation to external things. In this
1933–1936
5:325
sense, Aristotelian sensation contains intelligence: it gives information, and is not merely aesthetic. And since for us the Platonic catalogue of types and virtues is archaic, the Platonic or Aristotelian intellect, bringing those essences to intuition, is only an aesthetic faculty, and not very intelligent. The categories of human grammar and morals can be hypostatized with no more reason than the categories of sense Mr. Benamy Dobrée has [across ] received my essay on Berkeley and praises it.—I am now at work on Truth. Yours affly G.S. 1
De Anima (On the soul) is one of Aristotle’s two works on psychology.
To George Sturgis 18 April 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome April 18 1936 Dear George Would you mind doing something for me, namely, ordering Perry’s “William James: his Character & Philosophy” (or some title to that effect)1 to be sent to Mrs. C. H. Toy, 1 Waterhouse St. Cambridge, Mass.? It is very dear, $12 I think for the two volumes, but poor Mrs. Toy, who has been very ill, is unhappy about having lost one of the volumes sent by me, or rather about not receiving it, and I don’t want her to be deprived of possessing the whole work. I have heard from Mr. Wheelock of Scribner’s about the matter of my income tax for royalties, and I gather that, if they had known that I wasn’t an American citizen, they would have subtracted the tax before sending me the money. I suppose they will do that in future: which ought to relieve you of any trouble, except in regard to the other small sums that I am apt to receive; and of these, and of the rest also, if you like, I will send you a report at such times as you may find convenient. Apparently The Last Puritan continued to be the best-seller until April th 5 when (according to Bob Barlow) my “score had again gone up to 70, Sinclair Lewis’s had dropped to 38.”2 I don’t know what those figures stand for, but evidently it means large sales. 135,000 is the last figure reported to me by Scribner. People ask, and I ask, w/ What is the reason?
5:326
The Letters of George Santayana
Perhaps it is that some people like the book because they understand it, and others like it because they don’t understand it. Yours affly G.S. 1
The Thought and Character of William James. [Harry] Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951), an American novelist, graduated from Yale in 1908. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1930, the first American to win such an honor. His It Can’t Happen Here (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1935), a warning about the possibility of fascism in the United States, was his most vigorous work of the 1930s. 2
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 25 April 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome April 25, 1936 Dear Cory, Letters are not text-books, and if I return to our discussion about sense and intellect, it is not because I want to defend my casual phrases or to bother you with old old points, but that my own mind is in a fluid state on the subject. I am reaching new and more radical insights—not contrary to my usual formulae, but giving them, I hope, a closer fidelity to the facts. When I said, for instance, that all consciousness is intellectual, I was touching one of these fresh intuitions. Of course you are right—and I admitted it in saying that I was conscious of some confusion in my language— when [illegible ]you say [illegible ] that intellect reviews ideas, and ^ ^ that it is sense that gives us facts, and contains belief and intent. But belief and intent are attitudes, not objects or data: when we criticize these atti^ tudes we find that they are assumptions made instinctively in living, cog^ nitive assumptions—because animals are directed upon their environment, and their sensations awaken them to action (involving belief and intent). Aristotle and his followers (who were not critics but spokesmen of the mind) honestly share and reassert these assumptions: sense for them is knowledge of particular existent objects, not aesthetic essences (the intuition of which would not be knowledge, but fancy). [illegible ]We see visible things, the material objects by which sight is aroused. But I am a critic, a sceptic; and I can’t help seeing that, for the spirit, this is a strange commitment: virtually true, because spirit is incarnate; but
1933–1936
5:327
logically and morally distracting, because it fills spirit with presumption and care, as do all animal passions. Now natural knowledge is an animal passion (cf. the Herbert Spencer lecture); it truly reveals to spirit the extraordinary fact that it is incarnate, and that an alien material world actually surrounds it. For this reason we may say that intent and belief are intelligent (not intellectual) and that sense contains knowledge. But the transcendent scope and veracity of sense are assumed; spirit is pledged without its consent and without any evidence open to its inspection. In that way, sense is unintellectual, animal, dumb: yet this dumbness being dogmatic, being cognitive, and truly so, is a form of intelligence: it reveals the not-given. As you know “sense-data,” as people now call them, are not the existent material objects of sense, but rather the given essences obvious to spirit when critical: because all these modern writers are virtually idealists, and their personal or social “experience” is begged by them contrary to their first principles. This modern use of “sense”, takes belief and knowledge out of it, and requires us to appeal to intellectual construction, to give us any “sense” of an extended or even a historical world. I agree with you that this is artificial and vain. You will never get faith back, if you give up natural faith: you will have to live by ignominious inconsistencies. My own position is that sense and animal faith, are true in their blind dogmatism: but the dogmatism nevertheless is blind and alien to a spirit withdrawn into itself, I mean, addressed to those objects which it can perceive and possess perfectly, without danger or care. I have had a letter from Mrs. Peter Alden! At least, the lady says: “Oliver is my son!” and she goes on to show how far superior her son is to Oliver. I will take some of these letters to Paris, if we go there, so that you may read them.—Strong has not turned up yet.—I send you £5 more to celebrate the fact that the novel is still a bestseller. Yours affly G.S.
5:328
The Letters of George Santayana
To Otto Kyllmann 25 April 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton) Hotel Bristol, Rome April 25, 1936
Dear Mr. Kyllmann On receiving today your account and cheque (for which many thanks) I was particularly interested in seeing that The Last Puritan has sold so well: about 3500 in Great Britain and 1000 in Canada, until Jan 1, 1936. This is very satisfactory, as the reviews I have seen are also: it is more a compliment to the book than the unexpected popular success it has had in the U.S. because this is largely due to curiosity and self-consciousness on the part of the more cultivated Americans as to what a quasi-foreign observer might say about them. They have taken my indiscretions very well, as far as I can gather, and I am glad that we decided to publish the book now, instead of waiting until it would be too late to lynch me. I have had one more error—an annoying one—pointed out to me in the text. I make a note of it opposite for the printers.1 Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
There is no note on the holograph letter.
To John Hall Wheelock 26 April 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, April 26, 1936
Dear Mr. Wheelock You are evidently wedded to this plan of a limited edition; the moment is propitious and I won’t attempt to do the tyrannical parent and cross your loves. As you relieve me of the 12 prefaces, the worst objection from my point of view is removed. A general preface can be built out of the recent one to Obiter Scripta (about which more presently) and I think I can write a long preface for The Last Puritan, and for one or two of the other chief parts.
1933–1936
5:329
As to the number of volumes, that is your affair. I haven’t attempted, in the programme I enclose, to count the words and the pages. Some volumes may be overloaded and others thin, and I don’t see how the Life of Reason is going to be cut in three. It is neither the Holy Trinity nor ancient Gaul, and has five parts, like a true tragedy, like The Last Puritan and like my System, if ever completed.1 You probably have expert ways of rapidly calculating amounts of copy, and I leave the matter to you. Now, do you insist on making a complete edition? You left out Egotism, perhaps by accident: but I suggest that we purposely leave out The Hermit of Carmel, and a good deal of Obiter Scripta. The Hermit was eviscerated carefully when Poems were —as issued: do you think the rejected offal should be presented again to public? So in respect to “What is Aesthetics?” and “An aesthetic Soviet.” The editors of Obiter Scripta are worthy young men but academic: those pieces are college-shop. There are many others of mine not included: why should we include these? On the other hand The Indomitable Individual and A Few Remarks belong to Dominations & Powers, my political work not yet finished: they should stand over for that. I would therefore break up Obiter Scripta and Some Turns of Thought: both are merely collections, as indeed all my books are except The Life of Reason, The Realms, and The Last Puritan. We can profitably redistribute the contents according to their inward affinities, as I have tried to do in my arrangement. But several of these pieces could be shifted, to suit the length of the volumes. There is an enormous difference between Soliloquies, for instance, and Character & Opinion, which you proposed to couple. No: the former is inward, the latter external: and although nearly contemporary in date they belong to two distinct phases of my development, and Soliloquies is very much later morally. Also, as Realms is unfinished, and The Last Puritan is complete and covers my whole life, both in subject and in time of composition, Realms should come last.2 I will write again when I receive the sheets for autographing. Yours sincerely GSantayana [across] P.S. I have under lined in blue two papers recently written. You will find Tragic Philosophy in Scrutiny (Cam. England) for March 1936 . ^ ^ Bishop Berkeley is to appear in the autumn in a book edited by Bonamy Dobrée and entitled From Anne to Victoria. I haven’t a copy, but can send you proofs when I get them.
5:330
The Letters of George Santayana
1
Scepticism and the four Realms constitute Santayana’s system. Realms are the final volumes (XIV and XV) of the Triton edition.
2
To John Hall Wheelock [Early May 1936] • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
I suppose this communication is of no interest, but I send it to you to in case you care to answer it1 G.S. 1
The communication is a letter of 30 April 1936 to Santayana from J. Ellsworth Ross, Hollywood Publishers, asking for motion picture rights to Puritan. Wheelock wrote Ross saying these rights were available.
To the Class of 1886 [c. May or June 1936] • [Rome, Italy]
(MS: Unknown)
[…] As to my inner or moral adventures during this half-century, they are in part recorded in my books, which, I believe, would fill all the spaces left vacant in the questionnaire by my non-existent children and grandchildren. Not living any longer in America or being a professor naturally had some influence on my mental tone; also the war of 1914–1918 when I remained in England, chiefly at Oxford. Nevertheless I think I have changed very little in opinion or temper. I was old when I was young, and I am young now that I am old. I have passed through no serious illnesses, emotions, or changes of heart. On the whole the world has seemed to me to move in the direction of light and reason, not that reason can ever govern human affairs, but that illusions and besetting passions may recede from the minds of men and allow reason to shine there. I think this is actually happening. What is thought and said in America now, for instance, especially since the crisis, seems to me far less benighted than what was thought and said when I lived there. People—especially the younger people—also write far better English. If I had the prophetic courage of a John the Baptist I might cry that the kingdom of heaven is at hand;1 by which I don’t refer to a possible industrial recovery, or to a land flowing with milk and honey, but to a change of heart about just such matters and the beginning of an epoch in which spiritual things may again seem real and important. The modern world is loudly crying peccavi,2 but we know that this is
1933–1936
5:331
not enough. There must be a real conversion or redirection of the affections. I think this may actually ensue, in the measure in which such revolutions are compatible with human nature.3 1 John the Baptist, cousin to and forerunner of Jesus, was a prophet whose principal message was the imminent arrival of the Messiah. He practiced baptism and baptized Jesus in the Jordan River. He lived as a hermit, residing in the wilderness of Judea, and was beheaded by Herod about 40 A.D. 2 I have sinned (Latin). 3 This is an extract from a letter written on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of Harvard’s class of 1886 (per John M. Merriam, class secretary).
To Robert Steed Dunn 1 May 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Unknown) Rome, May 1, 1936.
“Bobby Dunn!” I said to myself on seeing your name printed at the upper left-hand corner of your envelope.1 “What a nice person that was!” But when I went on from that purely sentimental sensation in search of images or ideas, I had to open your letter for guidance, and afterward your book.2 I remember lunching with you in New York—wasn’t it in a basement?—and that you were already a mature person, not exactly Bobby Dunn any longer, but Robert Dunn; with something of that formidable will, that capacity for mysterious strong feelings and velléités3 which the hero of your book has … . I won’t pretend to fathom your intentions in your book. For one thing I don’t understand it very well. Perhaps if I heard it read aloud, with the right idiomatic emphasis, I should catch the meaning more often; but even then you have a lot of words unknown to me, as well as a mixture of slang and poetry which disconcerts my aged mind. Yet I feel that you are a poet in eye and heart, and I thank you for remembering me. Yours Sincerely, GSantayana 1 Robert Steed Dunn (1877–1955), a member of Harvard’s class of 1898, was an explorer and a poet. His works include The Shameless Diary of an Explorer (1907), The Youngest World: A Novel of the Frontier (1914), and World Alive: A Personal Story (1956). 2 Santayana’s library contains a 1936 issue of Horizon Fever (New York: A. and C. Boni, 1932). 3 Passing fancies, whims (French).
5:332
The Letters of George Santayana
To Robert Shaw Barlow 3 May 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton) Hotel Bristol, Rome May 3, 1936
Dear Bob It is very nice of you to take so much interest in The Last Puritan and its fortunes. Apart from friendship, no doubt it is a curious phenomenon that the book should “take” with the public. You and Loulie1 want to know how I feel on that point. Of course, I am gratified, and there’s money in it, which I didn’t expect or strictly need, but which it’s pleasant to have, especially as my earned income seems more my own that the money in George Sturgis’s hands; and I am going to regard it as income and not as capital, so that for a time I shall be very well off. At my age it makes less difference than it would have made formerly, and I hardly know what to do. I don’t want to travel, which would have been my first thought when I was young, or to buy anything in the way of possessions, not even books, except such as I mean to read. However, I am thinking of going to Paris and taking a little suite in a hotel, such as I have here in Rome, so as to spend the summer comfortably and see if I can finish The Realm of Truth, which I am now working on. My original feeling about The Last Puritan was that it was risky to publish it at all, during my life-time; but on the whole, at last, I overcame that apprehension: after all, I am out of the world, and it wouldn’t matter much even if people abused me. But the dangerous sides of the book—and it has more than one such—seem to have been overlooked or timidly ignored by the critics. Perhaps in conversation some people discuss these matters, but their comments don’t reach me. Granted, however, that the book went down and got a hearing, frankly I am not surprised that it is liked. Though it may become a little philosophical in places, it is written fluently, intelligibly, in pleasant English, and the characters (as one critic said) are “the very nicest people”, that is, rich and refined, or at least cultivated; and the public not familiar with such circles likes to enter them. What Loulie’s friend says about being led to philosophize by an easy approach may also have had something to do with holding the attention of certain persons; but hardly, I should say, of the public at large. However, you are in a better position to judge than I am. America and American books have changed a lot since I was there. Robert Dunn’s
1933–1936
5:333
Horizon Fever, for instance, which he sent me, is beyond me. I can hardly understand the language. Perhaps my old fashioned long-winded prose may be a relief. Yours ever G. S. [across] P.S. Which of my characters do you take to be Julia Robbins?2 Cousin Hannah or Letitia Lamb?3 Those of the characters that have originals at all, usually have more than one. 1
“Loulie” refers to Barlow’s sister, Mrs. Pierre (Louisa Barlow) Jay. Julia Robbins was a young friend Santayana had known in Boston who he referred to as an eccentric spinster. Santayana had copies of his early works sent to her. 3 In Puritan the unmarried Cousin Hannah lived with Peter Alden and his half brother Nathaniel. 2
To George Sturgis 5 May 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton) Hotel Bristol, Rome May 5, 1936
Dear George The other day I got Constable’s account for the six months ending on Dec. 31st 1935, which included two months’ and a half sales of my novel. About 3500 had been sold in Great Britain and 1000 for “export”, mainly, I expect, to Canada. But the Canadian sales are probably a good deal larger, because by arrangement with Scribner’s, the Canadian members of the Book-of-the-Month Club were supplied with American copies. The proceeds in royalties for me were about £250; the total cheque for £290, including all my other books during the half-year. Bob Barlow, who keeps writing to me about the success of the book, tells me that in the middle of April it was still the best seller in the U.S.; but I have not heard officially of more than 135,000, including the 35,000 or 40,000 taken by the Bookof-the Month Club. My royalty is (for the other 100,000) 10% for the first 7,500 and 15% for the rest: if my arithmetic is right that ought to come to about $40,000. August, I think, is the date for a first payment. So far I have received $5,000 from the Book-of-the-Month Club, which pays in round figures, $10,000, to be divided between author and publisher. I believe Scribner is going to pay taxes retroactively on my $5000: it is 4% or $200: so don’t pay it over a second time without making sure.
5:334
The Letters of George Santayana
As to your proposal that I should make an American will on the chance of its being accepted as legal, and in any case as a formal declaration of my wishes, that is just what I had suggested at first. In view of this new windfall, however, I might make a rather different and more generous distribution of my free money: I mean, of what is not in the trust. You might put this money (except what I may want for my London bank account) in a Boston bank in my name: and in the proposed will I might leave the following bequests: Mercedes R. de la Escalera, Nancy Toy (Mrs. Crawford H. Toy) 1 Waterhouse St, Cambridge, Mass. Daniel MacGhie Cory 52, Cranley Gardens, London, S.W.7 England Andrew Joseph Onderdonk, IV Argentinier Strasse, 4. Vienna Austria. $2,500 each: total, $10,000 Additional to the legacy to Harvard College for a Fellowship, in order to remedy in part the $10,000 fall in the dollar The rest (except what I may withdraw personally) would remain in the Boston bank, and go to you and Josephine at my death with the residue of my property. In the will, however, you should have a clause leaving to Cory, besides those $2,500 all my books, manuscripts, and personal effects. Taxes on the legacies should be paid out of the estate. It is not likely that both Mercedes and Mrs. Toy should survive me; so that there will be less than $20,000 to be distributed: and in any case, I should (if I get $40,000 or so) send you more than the $20,000 covered by the will, so that there should be a margin for taxes, and o/ for your commission. If this is clear and satisfactory, go ahead with framing the will: but I don’t expect the money before August, if then. Scribner is slow. Yours affy G.S. [across page one] P.S. I am thinking of going to Paris about June 1–st so you had better address me C/o B. S. & Co London.
1933–1936
To Constable and Co. Ltd. 9 May 1936 • Rome, Italy
5:335
(MS: Temple)
Hotel Bristol, Rome May 9, 1936 Messrs Constable & Company London Dear Sirs: I enclose the copy of the proposed agreement1 regarding a German translation of The Last Puritan. I find it entirely satisfactory. As to the right of translating my “next work”, I am perfectly willing to concede it, although I doubt that the Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung2 will wish to avail themselves of it. In fact my “next work” has already appeared: “Obiter Scripta”, [illegible ]published in New York by Charles Scribner’s Sons. Yours faithfully GSantayana 1
Unlocated. The publishing house, Beck (German).
2
To Charles Scribner’s Sons 15 May 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS radiogram: Princeton)
RX30 IRK55 XSX ROMA 8 15 1535 LC SCRIBNER NEWYORK ABOUT TRANSLATIONS CONSULT CONSTABLE SANTAYANA
5:336
The Letters of George Santayana
To Miriam Thayer Richards 18 May 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, May 18, 1936 Dear Mrs. Richards1 It is very pleasant to hear from you. This novel has caused old friends to rise again in various quarters. It is a plébiscite2 of interest which I didn’t expect. You ask about my childhood in Spain. A clever novelist might put in a good deal of melodrama between the lines of my childish experiences, showing what was happening in the minds of my elders. But I was unconscious of it at the time, and there were no conflicts or compulsions affecting me to my own knowledge. The relations between my father and mother were not unlike those of Peter Alden and his wife in my book, although the circumstances and the persons were entirely different. My mother, who had a little money, thought it her duty to bring up her three Sturgis children in Boston; but my father, who was over 50 and spoke no English, although he read it easily, couldn’t think of living in America himself. It came to a friendly separation: and from the age of 5 to 8 I remained in Spain with him, after my mother and the girls had departed: my brother having been sent ahead two years earlier. My father and I lived in a large house in Avila, with an uncle and aunt and their daughter, Antonia.3 Antonia was married from the house: afterwards returned there, and died there in childbirth. In the confusion of that tragedy I saw and heard a good many things that made an impression, including the green, but perfectly-shaped body of the still-born child. My parents were not young when they were married and more like grandparents to me in many ways. The warm relation I had in the household, after my father took me, in despair, to Boston and left me there with my mother, was with my sister Susana Sturgis, who was twelve years older than I. It was from her that I learned about religion: also about architecture: because Johnny P (Putnam) who was a beau of hers, was an architect. She forgot about art afterwards, and married an old lover—now a widower with six children—when she returned years afterwards to Spain. But the Ruskinian enthusiasm of Johnny P. stuck to me, and probably had some effect on my philosophy.
1933–1936
5:337
I could go on like this for pages. You can see from this sample that I had grounds — offor some childish cynicism in my early surroundings. But there were no troubles in my own life, except the troubles [across ] inseparable from being a spirit living in the flesh. I tried to describe them—abstracted from my own person—in my Oliver. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Miriam Stuart Thayer, daughter of Harvard Divinity School professor Joseph Henry Thayer, married American chemist Theodore William Richards in 1896. Theodore Richards was a member of Santayana’s Harvard class of 1886. 2 Popular vote (French). 3 Santiago and María Josefa Santayana’s daughter Antonia married Rafael Vegas, a lawyer, who was a widower with two young daughters.
To George Sturgis 19 May 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Rome, May 19, 1936 Dear George There are a few things of which I must give you notice before I forget them. 1. My cousin Manuela has moved to Vallehermoso 63, 1o, D, Madrid, Spain rd 2. I am leaving Rome probably on June 3– for the Hotel Savoy, Rue de Rivoli, 194bis Paris. 3. I shall need a fresh letter of credit, as the present one expires on June 31–st Please have the new one made out for $6,00000 like the last one, and sent to Cook’s in Paris. 4. My old and dear friend Mrs. Toy has been at death’s door, having had an operation for stone, but has recovered enough to return home, but with two nurses. She has a very inadequate income, and I have written to friends at Cambridge1 (from whom this news has come) suggesting that we raise a subscription to defray Mrs. Toy’s extraordinary expenses. I may therefore telegraph to you at any moment asking you to send, perhaps $1,00000 to somebody in Cambridge This will explain to you beforehand what the reason is. 5. I have good news about the continued sale of my novel, but no cash as yet, except the original $5,00000 from the Book-of-the-Month Club. Scribner, however, has a project of publishing an édition de luxe of my
5:338
The Letters of George Santayana
entire works, 12 volumes or more, at $1000 a volume, 750 copies only, on which I shall get 10%. If all were sold (as Scribner is confident they would be) that would bring in $9,00000 more. Such is fame: not all wind. I have decided to go to Paris relying on peace not being disturbed, at least this summer: if war came, I could run down to Biarritz,2 or even into Spain, and wait there for the storm to blow over. As you know, that Basque region is fairly pleasant both in summer and winter. What I expect, however, is to remain in Paris until October, and then return here. Strong and Cory will both be in Paris, as well as other friends. I am to have an apartment with a sitting-room for 75 francs a day, and I see no reason why I shouldn’t be comfortable and able to work. Too bad that this year you are not taking your French trip: but if I like the arrangement I will return every year, and we can meet when you come next. Yours affly G. S. 1
Jack and Sarah Ripley Ames. France.
2
To Constable and Co. Ltd. 22 May 1936 • Rome, Italy C
(MS: Temple)
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1. Rome, May 22, 1936 Messrs Constable & Company London. Gentlemen, I should be glad if you, or your agent, would take charge of all questions regarding the proposed translation of my writings. There was an enquiry recently about Swedish rights,1 from New York, which I asked to have referred to you. As to the proposal from the Librairie Gallimard, I should naturally be much honoured if any of my books appeared in the collection of the N. R. F.2 I leave it to you to make arrangements and to send the books asked for, as you may think fit. A young philosopher, M. J. Duron, who taught some years ago at a Lycée in Metz and has since been studying in England with a bourse3 from the Rockefeller Institute, has been engaged in writing his Doctor’s Thesis about my works, and incidentally translating some of them: but
1933–1936
5:339
nothing has been published to my knowledge. Perhaps it would be well for the Librairie Gallimard to know of M. Duron, if they have not already heard of him. Or you might include this letter in your reply, that they may have proof of my interest in their project. I am going to Paris in ten days, and shall be, at least for a time, at the Hotel Savoy, rue de Rivoli, 194bis, but you had better continue to address me C/o B. S. & Co as above Yours faithfully GSantayana 1
There is a Swedish translation of Puritan, Den siste Puritanen. En minneas roman, done by Alf Ahlberg (Stockholm: Natur och Kultur, 1936). 2 Nouvelle Revue Française. 3 European scholarship (French).
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 26 May 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia) Hotel Bristol, Rome May 26, 1936
Dear Cory I rather expect a letter from you this evening or tomorrow morning, and I won’t post this until I see whether you have anything to say that requires an answer. rd I expect to leave for Paris on June 3– and to establish myself there at bis the Savoy-Hotel rue de Rivoli, 194 . They offer me a supposed pleasant apartment for 75 francs a day, and half-pension for 23 francs more; much less than I pay here, so that my rash plan of being extravagant seems to be defeated by Providence. Strong expects to arrive at the Hôtel du Louvre th on June 6– and says he has finished his new final book, which he wants you to read before it goes to the printer. He might send you the MS to England, where it has to go in any case: but I haven’t ventured to suggest that idea, because I know he would at once reject it. He would therefore rather like you to come to Paris soon: I send you a bit more money to cover the expense of uprooting yourself and getting to Paris. If you like to come to the Savoy, do so, or go to the Louvre, or to your old pension if you prefer. I am not sure exactly how we shall arrange the routine of the day while Strong is in Paris—I rather expect he will not stay all summer— but my idea is to lunch with him and dine, either in my own sitting-room,
5:340
The Letters of George Santayana
or at some café or laiterie1—only a light supper. But I may alter this on trial. There are no Duvals left, or very few, so that dinner (or lunch) with Strong may not be possible: but there used to be a restaurant at the Hôtel du Louvre, beside the Café de Rohan, where S. could be wheeled without needing to be hoisted into his motor.2 Perhaps we might lunch there, and then I should return to my place for a restful afternoon, and go out again— quite free—in the cool of the evening. You can fit yourself in into our arrangement in any way you like, and you needn’t worry about money. Also don’t feel obliged to come to Paris at once if you dislike to leave London. Strong doesn’t really need you, or he can wait. Yours affly GS. 1
Dairy bar (French). Strong suffered from paralysis of the legs and was confined to a wheelchair.
2
To John Hall Wheelock 26 May 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome May 26, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock I send you the Preface to the proposed Limited Edition of my Works. It is a revision and enlargement of the Preface to Obiter Scripta. I also enclose a copy of “Tragic Philosophy” for your convenience. It has occurred to me that since it is about 50 years since I began writing, perhaps “Jubilee Edition”1 might be a good name for this issue, unless it is too commonplace. Yours sincerely G Santayana 1
“Jubilee Edition” was a rejected title suggestion for what became the Triton Edition.
1933–1936
To John Hall Wheelock 27 May 1936 • Rome, Italy
5:341
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123 Pall Mall, London. S.W.1 Rome, May 27, 1936 Dear Mr Wheelock Thank you for the amusing Ballad about being discovered by the masses.1 I have pasted in/ t in my copy of the American Edition which is variously illustrated with pictures from the press. It is quite true that the word “think” (for “thing”) doesn’t occur on line 10 of p. 524; but it is the first word of line 9. I made a mistake in counting: but I think the masses, despising accuracy and reading for the sense, might have discovered it. Anythink2 could only occur if I had been trying to make a German speak English. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Unidentified. This typographical error in the original Scribner’s edition of Puritan was corrected in the second printing of the edition in 1936. 2
To Charles Augustus Strong 28 May 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, Rome May 28, 1936 Dear Strong rd My ticket for Paris is taken for next Wednesday morning, June 3– and I expect to arrive the next day, at 9.30, at the Savoy-Hotel (so spelled) rue de Rivoli, 194 bis. They offer me an apartment with a sitting room said to be very nice for 75 francs a day, and 23 more for half-pension: much less than I pay here, so that I sha’n’t be wasting my new substance, as I had expected. I wrote also to the Hôtel Vendôme, just to compare prices, and they replied more vaguely, asking me to come and pick what I liked— did I want an inside suite or one on the street? And how would 75 francs a day do for the price? You see it is not extravagant, even there: but I didn’t pursue that possibility; it remains to be looked into if I don’t like the Savoy, and perhaps it might suit you, if you too wished to change. But I
5:342
The Letters of George Santayana
thought the Savoy would be less pretentious, better too if Cory should wish to come too —he^re^ (I leave him, of course, perfectly free to stay where he likes) and nearer to your place, if we are to lunch or dine together habitually. Besides, the Vendôme seems to have its front door in the Square—although I had entered it once with the Warwick Potters by the rue de Castiglione so that it is in view of the Ritz, Morgan’s, and over the Farmer’s Trust Company—rather a thick American capitalistic atmosphere. So I am trying the very French rue de Rivoli in preference. I wish it could be the Palais Royale/. I have written to Cory announcing our double arrival and sending him money for the trip, so that he may turn up soon. Yours ever G.S. [across ] P.S. I will inquire at the Hôtel de/ u Louvre on the afternoon of June th 6— to see if you have arrived.
To John Hall Wheelock 4 June 1936 • Paris, France
(MS: Princeton)
Savoy-Hotel, rue de Rivoli, Paris June 4, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock th Your letter of May 26– , in which, among other things, you speak of portraits or other illustrations for the Limited Edition of my Works, was awaiting me here when I arrived this morning from Rome. It is unlucky, because I am now separated for the summer from the few old papers and photographs which I possess. They are locked or nailed up together with my books and other belonging which I always leave at the Hotel Bristol when I go away for a holiday. However, there is nothing of much consequence except the drawing of me in 1896 made by Andreas Anderson, which certainly ought to be included. Perhaps it is the photograph from a drawing which you say you have: but I fear yours may be a beastly one done by a lady a few years ago, which I utterly ban, although perhaps impartial justice would declare that it does suggest one side of my nature; but there may be sides of one’s nature that ought to be suppressed. If you need the Anderson drawing before the autumn, you could borrow a copy from one of two ladies who I know possess it; Mrs. Crawford H. Toy, of 1 Waterhouse St, Cambridge, Mass, and Mrs. Robert Burnside Potter,
1933–1936
5:343
who used to live at Antietam Farm, Smithtown, Long Island; but since her husband’s death she has not written to me, and I am not sure that she is living there or indeed anywhere: for I sent her The Last Puritan, and have not received any acknowledgement. There is also my Class photograph, in 1886, probably obtainable in Cambridge Mass, or F/ from our class secretary. I could send you a copy in October, but not before. There is no earler — ier or later portrait, beside those you have, that I think ought to be preserved. As to scenes, the Harvard Yard as it was when I lived in it from 1882 to 1896 (with intervals) is very characteristic: also Iffley for the novel; or Avila, if you choose to be romantic. I was born in Madrid: but my father afterwards moved to Avila, my sister married there, and it is the place in Spain most familiar to me, where until recently I used to go often, and where I even owned a house that had been my father’s until his death in 1893. But I can’t supply anything worthy of being reproduced, representing any of these places. You would have to rely on your artistic department. More important is the arrangement of the text. It was stupid of me to overlook Dialogues in Limbo. Of course, they must be included. Their place is decidedly in vol IX, after Soliloquies in England; if there is still room the two papers from “Turns of Thought” might be added: if not these could go, together with The Unknowable and Ultimate Religion into vol. XII. I am not sure that the two essays from “Turns of Thought” (about Nirvana and the Infinite) are very important. They could be dropped out, if convenient: but the Unknowable and Ultimate Religion are key papers, and will go very well with Scepticism, which is technically my key-work. Couldn’t the Life of Reason be divided into two parts only one volume for Introduction, Common Sense, and Society, and another for Religion, Art, and Science? I remember Wm James saying that the whole Life of Reason ought to be printed in one volume The Last Puritan divides very well in halves, in the middle of Part III, at the words: “and be happy ever after”. The two episodes with Rose, the child and the young woman, thus wind up the two volumes as if intentionally. It would be easy for me to send you an autograph page to be reproduced. There is an unpublished sonnet about the Theee Philosophical Poets which I was reserving for my Posthumous Poems;1 perhaps it would
5:344
The Letters of George Santayana
do both for an autograph page and a preface to the Three Poets. Or what would you prefer? The sheets to be autographed have been stranded in London, being too heavy for the parcel post. I have asked to have them sent to me here in Paris by whatever conveyance may be most suitable. I am glad they didn’t turn up in Rome just when I was leaving. The preface to The Last Puritan is half written, but not yet in shape. I wish to write another on the relation, in my system, of physics with morals, or morals with physics: a point which people seem to be puzzled about, although it seems to me as simple as Columbus’ egg.2 But please don’t ask me to do anything more. I must be getting on with other matters. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
A facsimile of the holograph copy of this sonnet is the frontispiece to volume VI of the Triton Edition of Santayana’s Works. On the Three Philosophical Poets Falling untempered from the ethereal blue, The light of truth might scorch the eyes, and blind. Therefore these giant oaks their branches twined And betwixt earth and heaven the lattice drew Of their green labyrinth. Rare stars shone through, Low, large, and mild. The infinite, confined, Suffered the measure of the pensive mind, And what the heart contrived it counted true. Scant is that covert now in the merciless glare, Stripped all those leafy arches, riven that dome. Unhappy laggard, he whose nest was there. Some yet untrodden forest be my home Where patient time and woven light and air And streams a mansion for the soul prepare. 2 Christopher Columbus (1451–1506), Italian navigator and explorer, in reply to a suggestion that other pioneers might have discovered America had he not done so, challenged guests at a banquet to make an egg stand on end. All having failed, he flattened one end of an egg by tapping it against the table, so standing it up, indicating that he had discovered the way.
1933–1936
To George Sturgis 5 June 1936 • Paris, France
5:345
(MS: Houghton) Savoy-Hotel, Rue de Rivoli, Paris, June 5, 1936
Dear George I arrived here yesterday from Rome, and though the hotel is dingy and evidently has known better days, the view from my windows, over the Tuileries Gardens and the river is magnificent, and the breakfast (the only meal I have had here so far) very good, so that I shall probably stay here the whole summer. Politically and in general aspect, Paris at this moment seems far more unhappy and stricken than Italy, where everything is buzzing. There we re no regular papers published yesterday, and the ^ ^ restaurants I went to—the Régence & Poccardi’s—seemed deserted. But I daresay nothing tragic will occur for the present. You are held up in regard to my domicile. No domicile is indicated in my passport, but I have a separate Certificado de nacionalidad in which I am described as residing at the Hotel Bristol in Rome, which is the truth, in so far as the question is relevant to a fox that hasn’t a hole or a bird that hasn’t a nest. When Onderdonk years ago made investigations about my legal status—he is a timid and fussy person about legalities—he decided that my domicile was Avila, because that had been my father’s residence and I was still in possession of the house he had lived in, although it was let. Now that house has been “sold” to the Sastres.1 Perhaps my last regular domicile was my mother’s house in Longwood,/ —I forget the name of the Street—was it 75 Monmouth Street? I know I called that my domicile and not my rooms in Cambridge, when it was a question of town taxes. Perhaps, if that holds over after 25 years residence nowhere else in particular, the fact would facilate making an American will. You send me the latest reports about the sale of my novel, also reaching me from Scribner’s directly, to the effect that it is still selling well—after being first for 3 months and a half—and having reached 148,500 copies. The English sales have been nothing in comparison, about 7,000 up to April 1–st including about 2,000 for Canada. Mr. Kyllmann of Constable’s says he hoped for much more. On the other hand, it is being printed in raised letters for the blind which seems to put it on a par with the Bible in soul-saving power. The blind shall read it!
5:346
The Letters of George Santayana
I have had letters about it from Clip Sturgis, Rita Crosby, Rita Ingersoll, and Susie Barry!2 The latter, having once been [across] very pretty, says she used to hate me and asks for an autograph copy—which of course I shall send.—Did you ever get the one I sent you for your [across page one] neighbour, a lady whose name I forget? Perhaps I ought to have written for an American copy, and am doing so in this case. Yours affy G.S. 1 Santayana gave the house to the Sastre brothers, Susan’s stepsons, as an acknowledgment of the hospitality he had received from their family in Ávila. 2 Richard Clipston Sturgis (1860–1951) was an architect and grandson of “Uncle Russell” Sturgis (1805–87), brother-in-law of Santayana’s mother. Rita Crosby and Susie Barry are unidentified.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 9 June 1936 • Paris, France
(MS: Columbia)
Savoy-Hotel, Paris Rue de Rivoli, 194bis June 9, 1936 Dear Cory I don’t quite understand when you mean to come, but if this reaches you, it will serve to remove your fears of any inconvenience from the strike. Strong and I arrived safely on our respective days at our respective rather horrid hotels. You will see them for yourself, but for the present we are all right, and have lunch together daily at his place: cost to me 25 francs, which is moderate as things go for a full meal. You will find restaurants dear, but the experience is worth something and more entertaining than always the same boarding-house. If you will arrange to have your evening meal at your place, I can recommend a shop-girl place in the rue Cambon where, for 12 francs, you can get a very decent luncheon. Au revoir G.S.
1933–1936
To John G. Moore 16 June 1936 • Paris, France
5:347
(MS: Pennsylvania)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Paris, June 16, 1936 Dear Mr. Moore1 Nathaniel Alden, in my Last Puritan, is a memory or caricature, in part, of Mr. George Parkman, who lived alone in the Beacon Street house described in the book. His father had been murdered by a Dr. Webster, in a quarrel about rent, and cut up into small pieces and burnt in the doctor’s stove; but the skull remained, with teeth recognized by Mr. Parkman’s dentist; whereby the crime was finally discovered and Dr. Webster hanged. The victim (as also described in my book) was reputed to be a scrooge and a miser. His property then consisted, I understand, of real estate, largely small tenements let to the poor: but originally, no doubt, the family fortune was made in legitimate trade. In my day, as in my novel, the family had no active business, but lived on passively invested capital: something which puzzled and amused Peter, as if he had found a buried treasure in the Arabian Nights, but made his more conscientious son uncomfortable. I meant this as you suggest, to lie at the back of a certain uneasiness and conscious maladjustment in my belated Puritans: yet for my young hero it was all rather remote and indistinct. He was more distressed by intellectual and emotional difficulties of his own than by his family history: especially as the dominant power at home was his mother, who had no such ghosts in her closets. It is surprising and gratifying to me that my somewhat farcical sketch of old Boston should be treated so seriously. It is not founded on much real acquaintance with that society, but chiefly on hearsay. The Boston and Harvard I knew directly were much more vague and miscellaneous in character. This book is not at all a history of my own experience, but a picture of what I felt to be the tragedy of many admirable young minds of my acquaintance Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Unidentified.
5:348
The Letters of George Santayana
To George Sturgis 21 June 1936 • Paris, France
(MS: Houghton) Hôtel Savoy, 194bis, rue de Rivoli, Paris, June 21, 1936
Dear George Thank you for the new letter of credit, which I have received from Cook’s here. In a few days I shall draw the $50000 which remain to my credit in the old letter. Probably, the new one won’t come into operation actively until August. My Cambridge friends, Jack Ames and his wife, to whom I appealed in regard to Mrs. Toy’s possible need of assistance, have not yet replied. On the other hand, I have a letter from Mrs. Toy herself about her conversations at dinner parties; this sounds as if nothing very dreadful had happened, and perhaps I shall not need to trouble you about the matter. Mrs Toy says, by the way, that you wrote her a very nice letter on sending her the Life of Wm James. I am established here rather comfortably, with a splendid view, otherwise in a rather modest hotel, where everything is rather faded and dingy: but I like the quiet, and if the very warm weather we have been having doesn’t keep up too long or become oppressive, I expect to stay here all summer. I go to lunch with Strong every day at his hotelx, and in the evening pick up a little dinner or supper—usually only a roast-beef sandwich and a demi of beer—at some café or restaurant. Cory is also in Paris, but at a pension of his own, and I see him only two or three times a week. Other friends will probably turn up later. Yours affly G.S. [across ] x paying my part each day which, with wine & fee, is 25 francs.
1933–1936
To John Hall Wheelock 21 June 1936 • Paris, France
5:349
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Paris June 21, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock, I am sorry about “Egotism” being out of print. My only copy is packed up for the summer in Rome, like my photographs. I would gladly send it to you if I could get at it, as I am not a lover of first editions or books in their physical capacity, unless beautiful to the eye. I hope by this time you have secured a copy. There must be a good many in New York, at Columbia, and among my old friends. It is a short concise book and might easily be copied, if it could be borrowed. As to the title for the special edition, I don’t like “Jubilee” very much myself; nothing else had occurred to me; I am not familiar with the usage of giving these fancy names to editions, and I must leave it to you to think of a suitable word, if one is really required. The sheets to be autographed have reached me in three parcels. I have already signed one set, I suppose about 300, and repacked them as they came; the corners are a little bent in places and a few sheets a little torn: you probably sent them so well packed that they had to be seriously disturbed to be examined by the custom s houses. I hope they may ulti^^ mately reach you in tolerable shape. The Preface to The Last Puritan is finished, but I want to reread it, and to let Cory, who is in Paris, read it too, before sending it to you; and I am at work on another preface to go either with the volume containing “Soliloquies in England” & “Platonism” or (if that volume is crowded) with “Scepticism & Animal Faith”: my point being to explain the difference between the earlier and later phases of my philosophy, the harmlessness of “essences”, and the relation between matter and nature on the one hand and morals and spirit on the other:—the points on which I think readers are most likely to misunderstand me. I haven’t any further prefaces in mind. I mentioned the Sonnet about Three Philosophical Poets, which might do as a preface and autograph page for that volume: and if you want another preface, wouldn’t a part, the earlier part, of my “Brief History of my Opinions” do for an early volume in the series? Yours sincerely GSantayana
5:350
The Letters of George Santayana
To Robert Shaw Barlow 22 June 1936 • Paris, France
(MS: Houghton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Paris, June 22, 1936 Dear Bob I have just finished Faulkner’s “Sanctuary”1 and I think I have understood all the pornographic part, corncob, etc, and the character of Popeye which is like any villain in melodrama, just as Miss Reba and her establishment and her genteel friends entertained after the funeral; all this being very well done, so as to seem [illegible ] lik/ fe-like, at least to the uninitiated. I found myself also absorbed in the story as a whole, without exactly following the thread of it, which it would have taken me a second reading to disentangle. But frankly I don’t think it worth bothering about. Like all these recent writers, the author is too lazy and self-indulgent and throws off what comes to him in a sort of dream, expecting the devoted reader to run about after him, sniffing at all the droppings of his mind. I am not a psychological dog, and require my dog-biscuit to be clearly set down for me in a decent plate with proper ceremony. But Faulkner, apart from those competent melodramatic or comic bits, has a poetic vein that at times I liked extremely; in describing landscape or sheer images. This matter of images is very interesting, but confused. The image-withoutthought poets often jump from the images supposed to appear to a particular observer, as in a dream, to images visible only to another observer, to the author in his omniscient capacity, as if they were the substance of the physical world common to all sane people. But there are no common images; there are only common objects of belief: and confusion in this matter of psychological analysis renders these modern writers bewildering, because they are themselves bewildered. Faulkner’s language I like well enough when it is frank dialect, or unintended poetry: but I wish he wouldn’t, in his own person, say “like” for “as”, “like they do down South”. And the trick of being brutally simple and rectilinear in describing what people do, or rather their bodily movements, becomes tiresome after a while; especially when these bodily movements have no great significance but again are mere images strung along because they happen to appear to the author’s undirected fancy.
1933–1936
5:351
The absence of moral judgements or sentiments helps to produce this impression of conscious automata, wound up, and running round and round in their cages. I think there is biological truth in that view, but we have also a third, a vertical, dimension. We can think: and it is in that dimension that experience becomes human. It is very warm in Paris now, and my rooms too sunny, but if I stick it out, I hope to see Barley2 when he is here Yours ever G.S. 1
William Faulkner (1897–1962), American author and screenwriter, won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1950 and the Pulitzer Prize for his novel A Fable in 1955. His early works were considered difficult and did not follow traditional forms of fiction. Sanctuary was published in 1931 (New York: J. Cape & H. Smith). 2 Presumably Barlow’s son.
To John Hall Wheelock 23 June 1936 • Paris, France
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Paris, June 23, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock In regard to a fancy title for the limited edition of my works, would Triton Edition be at all the sort of thing required? It seems senseless, but I understand they all do more or less. What suggested the word to me ^^ is that my windows in Rome look down on the Fontana del Tritone and Via del Tritone.1 The Triton, by Bernini,2 is well known, and might be reproduced for a frontispiece or paper-cover. Then there is the association with Wordsworth’s sonnet: “a pagan suckled in a creed outworn” and “hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.”3 th On re-reading your letter of June 11– I am a little puzzled about the arrangement of the volumes which you propose. I didn’t know that “Dialogues in Limbo” had been assigned to the same volume as “Scepticism”. If I suggested that, it was in a moment of confusion (I have them easily in such matters) and not what I meant. The volume containing “Scepticism” is technical and introduces “Realms of Being”. The material used to fill out that volume ought to be of the same epistemological character: “Meanings of the Word Is,” “Literal & Symbolic
5:352
The Letters of George Santayana
Knowledge”, and if more stuff is needed, “The Unknowable”, or “Philosophical Heresy” or both, might be put in. But certainly “Dialogues in Limbo” should be in quite a different region, before the “Last Puritan”, and in the same or succeeding volume with “Soliloquies”, “Platonism” & “Ultimate Religion”. I hope you have found a copy of “Egotism in German Philosophy.” As to the paper on Berkeley, I am writing to Mr. Bonamy Dobrée, the editor of the book in which it is to appear, asking him to send me a type-written copy, if proof is not to be had immediately; and I will send it on to you after correcting the possible errata. I will also send you the Prefaces and the autographed sheets as soon as possible. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Triton Fountain and Triton Street (Italian). Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680) was an Italian baroque sculptor and architect. In Greek mythology Triton is the merman son of Poseidon. Later literature speaks of many Tritons. They rode over the sea on horses and blew conch shells. 3 William Wordsworth (1770–1850), an English romantic poet, is known for his worship of nature, humanitarianism, democratic liberalism, and interest in the common people. Santayana quotes the tenth and fourteenth lines of Wordworth’s Sonnet XXXIII, “The world is too much with us” (1807). 2
To John Hall Wheelock 28 June 1936 • Paris, France
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Paris, June 28, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock Concerning the drawing of me by Andreas Anderson, I have a letter from Mrs. R. B. Potter, who seems not to like to lend her copy. I hope my other friend Mrs. C. H. Toy has been more obliging; but if there is a hitch there also (as is possible, since Mrs. Toy has scarcely recovered from a serious illness) I have written to Mrs. Potter, explaining what happens, and begging her to send you her photograph of that drawing, if you should ask for it again. If there is no other way of getting a copy in time, please write to Mrs. Potter, at Smithtown, Long Island; and she promises beforehand, in her letter to me, to let you have the picture, if I wish it,
1933–1936
5:353
precious as she regards it, on account of Andreas Anderson doubtless, and anxious as she is about not having it injured or lost. I am sorry there should be all these comic human difficulties in such a simple matter: but I was glad of the occasion putting me in communication again with an old and valued friend. I see you have agreed on the name Avila for the limited edition, so that my suggestion of Triton falls to the ground. My friends here also think —la, which Avila excellent: but I am afraid people will call it Avilla or Aveé will sound just as well, no doubt, to their ears; but the place is called Ah´vila, Latin Abu∪ la, with the adjective, even in modern Spanish, Abulense;1 and it would shock a native ear to hear it accented otherwise. I have been a little under the (very warm) weather; if I can, in a day or two, I will look up some photograph shop here and see what they have by way of photographs of Avila, so as to send you any view that may particularly please me. The interior of the Cathedral apse, with the renaissance tomb of Dr. Tostado,2 writing a large folio, is particular ly interesting, if we ^ ^ could only find it well reproduced. Two thirds of the sheets are now autographed, and I hope in a few days to despatch the lot, as well as to send you the two further prefaces and the autograph sonnet. I hope you may be able to send me proof of these newly written or newly printed bits, as there might be slight verbal changes, or changes in punctuation, which I might wish to make on seeing the text in type. Mr. Dobrée also promises to send me a type-written copy of the Bishop Berkeley which I will forward to you immediately. When do you plan to publish the limited edition? For next Christmas? Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Of, from, or having to do with Ávila. A late medieval Spanish theologian, Alfonso Tostado was bishop of the Ávila diocese.
2
5:354
The Letters of George Santayana
To Justus Buchler 1 July 1936 • Paris, France
(MS: Brooklyn)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Paris, July 1, 1936 Dear Mr. Buchler Your letter and article come most opportunely, at a moment when I am giving the last [illegible ]touches to a Preface (for a volume of the special edition of my “Works” which Scribner is preparing) precisely about the relation of my later philosophy to the life of reason. And you remind me of something I was overlooking: that what people (at least at Columbia) dislike is not so much the materialism or ontology slipped under the life of reason, as the “spiritual life” supposed to be substituted for it in my estimation. That is a complete misconception. No doubt when I wrote The Life of Reason I was taken up with rational ethics and interested (as I still am) in the theory of government and the pro’s and con’s of religious institutions. But I never thought of life in society, or of moral economy, as the obligatory or only worthy life. I am not a dogmatist in ethics. In so far as we legislate and arrange things for mankind at large, of course we must do so rationally, with as fair a regard as possible to all the interests concerned. But these interests change and fade into infinity, and the art of government or education must, in practice, be rather empirical and haphazard. The best results, like the worst, will be unforeseen. Meantime actual life in each creature has its exquisite or terrible immediate reality. It is a spiritual life. It is spiritual in children as easily as in anchorites. This is not a substitute for the life of reason, but the cream or concomitant ultimate actuality of what the organized life of reason produces in consciousness. Of course, in so — man far as a man’s thoughts are absorbed in instrumentalities, in business or politics or war or jollification, we do not call his Experience spiritual: but those very actions might be food for a spiritual life if a recollected and mystical man performed them: so that the rationality of his life and its spirituality might be called two concomitant dimensions of it, the one lateral and the other vertical. The vertical or spiritual dimension is what inward religion has always added to life in the world, or in the cloister, which is a part of the world: that element may be more or less emphatic or genuine, according to a man’s temperament or
1933–1936
5:355
experience, but it is always an element, optional, private, like the love of music or like love at large. The legislator may salute it, he cannot contract to produce it. What you say about my “novel” is excellent: but I don’t think my three young [across] persons share the substance of one God. You seem to me too kind to Jim, and not kind enough to Oliver. Yours sincerely GSantayana
To John Hall Wheelock 6 July 1936 • Paris, France
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Paris, July 6, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock Enclosed is the contract for the special edition of my “Works”, signed & witnessed: the essay on Bishop Berkeley: an autograph version of the sonnet On the Three Philosophical Poets: another copy of this in my ordinary handwriting, in case the other seems cramped.1 I was not sure whether the reproduction can vary the size of the original or not, and for that reason made the autograph version fit the proposed page. I have signed all the sheets now, and will see at once about sending them back to you. The two remaining prefaces will follow soon. Mr. Bonamy Dobrée, who had the enclosed copy of the Berkeley made for me says he thinks his book, From Anne to Victoria, will appear in October, and that his publisher expects that the contents shall not have appeared previously. I have replied that I suppose the limited edition of my “Works” will not be ready until well after that time, but that I would inquire of you about it. As the Berkeley was written for Mr. Dobrée’s book, I couldn’t very well print it elsewhere first. Mr. Dobrée has no objection to the publication afterwards. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Unlocated.
5:356
The Letters of George Santayana
To Constable and Co. Ltd. 9 July 1936 • Paris, France
(MS: Temple)
Savoy Hotel 194bis rue de Rivoli Paris, July 9, 1936 Messrs Constable & Company London Gentlemen, Here is another, probably futile, project of translation which I wish you would refer to your agent, or deal with as you think best. In the matter of a translation of The Last Puritan into Spanish,1 I have been placed in an awkward position, from which I see no way of extricating myself except by letting you decide the matter without my intervention. I suppose the persons concerned have written to you directly, as that is in each case what I have asked them to do. Yours faithfully GSantayana 1 Puritan was translated into Spanish by Ricardo Baeza as El último puritano; memoria en forma de novela (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamerica, [1940]).
To John Hall Wheelock 17 July 1936 • Paris, France
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Paris, July 17, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock I am ashamed to have taken so long about these prefaces. My attention was distracted from the one to Vol. XII. (?) by finding that this one to The Last Puritan had to be completely recast. Cory had read it and said, in a perfunctory way, that it was all right: but I expect he merely thought it useless to trouble me with criticisms, and wasn’t very much interested himself in the matter, having talked it over with me many times in the past. On rereading it myself, however, I was shocked at the incoherence of it. I have cut it down a good deal and tried to give it some unity. As a
1933–1936
5:357
composition I am afraid it can’t be very good, but at least it now contains all that I wanted to say in as succinct a form as possible. I am now turning back to the other preface, which I hope to send you within a week. It will help me to know that you intend to print the whole of my “Brief History of my Opinions”, as that includes, at least virtually, the points which I am making in the new preface, and I can refer to it, as to the Preface to the Second Edition of the Life of Reason, for the general argument, and concentrate more on the special subject in hand. There will be many repetitions in these 14 volumes in any case; but I suppose that is inevitable in a desultory writer. I went yesterday to Braun’s shop,1 where they had photographs of everything in the old days: but the place is moved and entirely vulgarized. I couldn’t get a view even of the Triton, not to speak of views of Avila. I will try the rue Bonaparte one of these days: but I am afraid the aesthetic [illegible ]glories of the 1890’s are past forever, when people were rich and had just discovered the beautiful. Beauty now is debunked, and also bank-accounts. I daresay New York is the best of places for finding things now, and I rely on you to select the frontispieces. I sent you the autographed sheets, the Berkeley, and the Sonnet some time ago. I hope they have arrived safely. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Adolphe Braun (1812–77), a French textile designer and photographer, started Adolphe Braun et Cie, which, under the later direction of his son Gaston (1845–1928), became one of the largest publishers of topographical photographs and reproductions of works of art.
To George Sturgis 23 July 1936 • Paris, France
(MS: Houghton)
Savoy Hotel 194bis rue de Rivoli, Paris July 23, 1936 Dear George The enclosed letter1 to Mrs. Ames explains itself in part; but a further ^ ^ reason why I enclose it to you, instead of sending it direct to Cambridge is that I have forgotten not only her address but her husband’s full name. She is “Sarah Ripley Ames” (Mrs. “Jack” Ames) and lives in Cambridge:
5:358
The Letters of George Santayana
you can have her looked up in a directory, telephone book, or blue-book; and please have the enclosed put in an envelope and addressed to her properly. I am sorry to trouble you, but I am getting dotty and forget things. For instance: in the great edition of my “works” which I believe I told you is being prepared, Scribner wishes to include a pamphlet I once wrote entitled “Brief History of my Opinions”, in which I explain my family connection with the Sturgis tribe and refer to your grandfather George Sturgis as the “sixth son” of Nathaniel Russell Sturgis. Now, I suspect it ought to be “sixth child”.2 Could you, if you don’t have the family tree at hand, ask somebody and let me know? I got that item long ago from your aunt Susie, who wrote to me in Spanish. In that language there is no distinction possible between “son” and “child”: and since the word means son primarily, I translated it so, without considering that it here probably meant sixth child. It is a trifle, but I am anxious to have these reports as accurate as possible. To return to the affair of Mrs. Toy, a subscription had already been 00 raised and she had received $1,150 — which Mrs. Ames thinks was enough for her extra expenses. But I wish you would keep those $1000 of mine ear-marked, in case a further contribution should be asked for, to tide her over her difficulties. I am settled here comfortably enough, with a great view, and Strong and Cory for daily company. No doubt France Spain and more or less everything is going to the dogs: but that has been happening ever since the creation, and in spite of it all, here we are, you and me, quite decent presentable people having rather a good time. Let everything continue to go to the dogs, and probably the dogs will like it. Yours affly G.S. 1
Unlocated. George Sturgis (1817–57) was the ninth child and the fifth son of Nathaniel Russell Sturgis (1779–1856) and Susan Parkman, who were married in 1804. 2
1933–1936
To John Hall Wheelock 31 July 1936 • Paris, France
5:359
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Paris, July 31, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock Here at last is the Preface to Volume Seven. It has given me a lot of ^ ^ trouble, I have cut it down and somewhat shifted the subject, but here it is. And with this my part towards the preparation of the Triton Edition seems to be complete. Deo gratias.1 The arrangement of matter for the volumes, as given in your letter of July 17, seems excellent, except that Hamlet, in vol. II, ought to come before Shelley.2 It was written earlier (for Sidney Lee’s big edition of Shakespeare)3 and the subject is earlier chronologically. Besides, it fits more closely with The Absence of Religion in Shakespear contained in Interpretations of Poetry & Religion. This also brings Tragic Philosophy last, which sums up the subject and was written this year or last year: anyhow, my last word. Vol. XIII, Cory and I think, will be the star volume, at least for philosophers.4 Perhaps someday it might be reprinted in a cheap edition for use in colleges. As to the illustrations, I am sorry to be helpless. I had a very nice little photo of myself at 18, my graduating school portrait, but somehow I have lost it. Possibly George Sturgis or his wife asked me for it when they were in Rome years ago. In that case he may be able to let you have it Or the Latin School people in Boston: although I doubt that they collect photographs of their old boys. It was the class of 1882. There was also a family group taken a year or two later in which I had rather long hair and little whiskers—bad form, but characteristic of the time before I had become a commonplace Harvard man Otherwise, I don’t remember any picture of me in “early youth”. The Denman Ross portrait is not a good likeness, but I am pilloried in it for all future time in Emerson Hall,5 and as it has a beard it will seem ^^ more like me to my old pupils between 1906–1912. All the rest of my life I have worn only a mustache As to views of buildings, Prescott Hall is a place I lived in for a short time at the very end of my Harvard days, and is commonplace. Hollis or
5:360
The Letters of George Santayana
Stoughton Hall, in the Yard, if not seen in your Yard photograph would be much better. I lived in 19 Hollis from 1882 to 1886, and in 7 Stoughton, as Proctor, from 1890 to 1896. It was there, in this last year, that Andreas Anderson made his drawing of me by the firelight. Even Holden Chapel (nice in itself) would not be far-fetched. I once lectured in it, and before President Eliot! I also took elocution lessons there in my 6 Senior year from Herie —y Dixon Jones, who played Marc Antony in Sanders Theatre once, hiding his rounded form in gauze drawers and a tiger-skin. But if you are hard up for views, there is the Chapel of King’s College, Cambridge. I lived under its beatling buttresses in 1896–7, when I was a member of that College, and the interior* (most magnificent, and celebrated in one of my “Poems”)7 was visited by me almost every afternoon for vespers, when there was no sermon. I sat in the choir in my bachelor’s gown (without strings, as I had no native degree)8 and once, surprised on a feast-day, even in a surplice. This (without any affectation) was a more important local influence on my life than Prescott Hall. [across] *This would be excellent for vol. IX, Soliloquies in England Wouldn’t Boston Common with the State House and the top of Beacon Street be appropriate for vol I. of the novel? Iffley, for vol. II. This is no moment to get anything from Spain:9 but if ever I come to complete my autobiography, I will make an effort to gather together all our old family truck, much of which is still in Avila, in the family of my sister’s husband. Without going back there—which I am not inclined to do—I could ask them to send me the old pictures and letters. If you can wait until October, I could send you two old, slightly faded, large photographs of the tomb of Doctor Tostado in the Cathedral of Avila: together, they form a lovely view of the interior of the apse, which is architecturally interesting. I could even go to Rome a little earlier, so that you sh c/ ould get the pictures by October 1–st I can find nothing now ^ ^ in Paris. I may be forgetting to consent to some of your other suggestions, but you may take for granted that I do consent. Yours sincerely GSantayana P.S. I hope you are reprinting “Lucifer” from the édition de luxe which has some corrections and a preface. Of the corrections the only important one is in Act. IV. in the Angels’ hymn, where a triplet derided by my poetical
1933–1936
5:361
friends was deleted, and something a little better, both in form and substance, put in its place. But all the corrections are, I think, improvements. nd 2– P.S. rd I have just received your letter of July 23– “Brief History of my Opinions” would seem to go best into vol. VIII, which has only 224 pages; unless you cared to put it in vol. II. If desired, one of the two minor articles in vol. VI could be shifted to vol. VIII to equalize them a little better. In the last vol., Proust on Essences should be after Essence, before Matter, and in smaller print, like the Postcript already there. 1
Thank God (Latin). Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), the English romantic poet, was much admired by Santayana. As a Harvard professor, Santayana held regular meetings of undergraduates in his rooms for the purpose of reading poetry aloud. During 1910–11 the group read “only Shelley, from beginning to end, except The Cenci ” (Persons, 345). Santayana wrote “Shelley: or the Poetic Value of Revolutionary Prinicples,” which became chapter V of Doctrine. 3 Sidney Lee (1859–1926), an English editor and author, edited the Dictionary of National Biography from 1891–1901. The Life of William Shakespeare (1898, rev. ed. 1925) is his best known work. Lee edited and annotated the twenty-volumes of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1906–8); Santayana’s “Introduction to Hamlet ” is in volume 15. 4 Volume XIII contains four of Santayana’s most technical writings: Scepticism and Animal Faith; “Some Meanings of the Word ‘Is’”; “Literal and Symbolic Knowledge”; and “The Unknowable.” 5 Denman Waldo Ross (1853–1935), an artist and educator, graduated from Harvard (A.B. in history, 1875; Ph.D., 1880). Shifting his field to art, he taught at Harvard after 1889 in architecture and in fine arts. Ross’s 1909 portrait of Santayana hangs in Emerson Hall at Harvard. 6 Henry Dixon Jones graduated from Harvard in 1881. 7 “King’s College Chapel” (1896). 8 In Persons, 432, Santayana says that he wore a “master’s gown (without strings, because not a master of arts of that university).” 9 On 18 July 1936 a military revolt against the Popular Front government, led by General Francisco Franco, began the Spanish civil war. 2
5:362
The Letters of George Santayana
To David J. Dowd Jr. 11 August 1936 • Paris, France
(MS: Houghton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Paris, Aug. 11, 1936 Dear Mr. Dowd1 There were many models in real life for my Oliver; and I am not surprised that in the younger generation there should be many who can read their own characters into his, even if the circumstances now are different. You know that he first came into my mind 45 years ago, simply as a “good” boy; but the difficulties for a young American in being both good and happy became evident to me very gradually; and when I finally revised the story for publication, only one or two years ago, it had become necessary to shift his date to much more recent times; so that there was danger that the reality of his character should not be understood. That you should not only understand him, but wish to be like him, and should see in my picture of him a justification rather than a warning— all this interests and pleases me very much: because I, too, admire and almost envy Oliver, in spite of people thinking him a failure. Some say he is a failure of mine artistically, others that he is a failure in himself morally. I venture to think that he is neither, even if not in either sense altogether a success. Hamlet was a greater success artistically, no doubt; but he was a worse failure morally, because he was not only overwhelmed by the world, but distracted in his own mind; whereas Oliver’s mind was victorious. This is a complicated subject, and I can’t go into it at length. They are going to publish a grand edition of my “works” in which there will be a long preface to The Last Puritan, in which I discuss the matter. It will be a very expensive edition and strictly limited: but someday when you are in a big public library you may be curious to look that preface up and see if I have described you correctly in my diagnosis of my hero. In a word, I think he was superior to his world, but not up to his own standard or vocation. To be perfect and heroic, he ought to have been more independent. But he was tethered, and hadn’t the strength or courage to break away completely. He hadn’t the intelligence to see clearly what he should break away to. As to not having the same feelings as other people in regard to love, etc., that oughtn’t to trouble you. In the first place, people as not what
1933–1936
5:363
their language makes them out to be, and if your feelings are genuine, you will find them generally understood and respected by people in their hearts. Then even real singularity has its privileges, although it may condemn one to silence. That silence in itself also has a blessed side Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Unidentified.
To George Sturgis 12 August 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Victoria Glion-s.-Montreux Switzerland Aug. 12, 1936 Dear George I arrived here this morning early, in the rain, having decided to leave Paris for various little reasons and also on account of a certain political strain that made one feel insecure. Here, on neutral ground, I hope to be safe from revolutions, strikes, brandished fists, hammers and sickles, and being tapped on the head by a youth on a bicycle (not very hard) because I had on a Panama hat, which I suppose marked me for a capitalist. Cory was returning to England, and Strong, also, felt uneasy and started for Cannes. They talk of the coming revolution in France as a matter of course, but I don’t know in which direction they expect to revolve: perhaps in both at once, with results as in Spain. Certainly the Sastres and Mercedes must be on the insurgent or nationalist side in this war. Mercedes is at Bayona in Galicia: from there it isn’t far to Portugal, if they had to migrate. I haven’t heard from her since the row began: but letters have reached me lately from Madrid, from literary people, who seem to side with the government. I am not well informed about the details or personalities of this quarrel, but, as you say, it is old Spain versus modern internationalism: and issues are very complicated and confused. The Basques, for instance, the old Carlists,1 seem, at least in part, to support the government, because they expect in that way to secure their autonomy. But in Russia the various languages only are allowed: and what is the use of keeping your native language if you have
5:364
The Letters of George Santayana
to say foreign things in it? I don’t read the reports in the papers, they are too contradictory to be trusted: but I expect that in the end—perhaps after a Bolchevik season, as in Hungary—some compromise will be patched up, as after the previous civil wars, and nothing — w— ould will be settled. It would be distressing for a moment if all the churches in Spain were burned or turned into cinemas, and all the “nice” people disappeared: yet perhaps in the end that would be the most merciful solution. Nobody would mind, if nobody existed. I am thoroughly reconciled to the transitoriness of things, even of nations. The Jews, for instance, aren’t in the least like Abraham or King Solomon: they are just sheenies; and so with all other conservatisms. You can’t keep anything up permanently: therefore, I say, let the age have its fun. Thank you for the snap-shots. Bobby especially is growing up [across ] to be very nice-looking.2—As to the sales of my novel I have heard nothing more. The first account ought to arrive soon. Yours affly G.S. 1 The Basques are Catholic people, primarily peasants, shepherds, and fishermen, who occupy the northern provinces of Spain. For years they remained independent, or at least able to retain their old democratic rights. However, in 1873 their privileges were abolished because of their pro-Carlist stand during the Carlist wars. The three Basque Provinces were granted autonomy in 1936; this was revoked in 1937 because of their resistence against Franco in the civil war. 2 Robert Shaw Sturgis.
To John Hall Wheelock 14 August 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Glion-s.-Montreux Aug. 14, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock I find almost no errors in these proofs and have made only one change of any importance: the omission of eight lines from the opening of the ^ ^ new general Preface. I had the idea of “Jubilee” in mind, and that led me into rhetorical complications which, happily, we can now avoid. As the proof is still in galleys, I think the correction will give little trouble, and will relieve an over-laboured passage. I wish I could write more simply.
1933–1936
5:365
If anybody should take to imitating my style, what a horrible thing it would be! I am still expecting proof for the Bishop Berkeley and the two other new Prefaces, to The Last Puritan and to Volume Seven. In looking again over the table showing the distribution of material in the Triton Edition, it occurs to me that “Ultimate Religion” as far as theme and tone are concerned, would go better at the end of vol. X than at the end of vol. XIII, where it is now placed. As vol. X, as now arranged, has 315 pages, and vol. XIII has 385, the change would tend to equalize their length. It is true, on the other hand, that “Ultimate Religion” is recent: yet not more so than the “Essays” in vol. X. I think also that, being saner and more addressed to the public than much in vol X. it might help to correct in the reader any impression of excessive mysticism in my religious philosophy. Volume XIII would then be entirely devoted to the theory of knowledge and to philosophic criticism. It would be less valuable if taken alone, to represent my whole system but perhaps more coherent in itself. ^ ^ Yours sincerely GSantayana P.S. I send the proof for convenience under a separate cover.
To John Hall Wheelock 16 August 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Glion, Aug. 16, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock th Your letter of Aug. 5, enclosing the royalty report, mentions (in the 4– line) 60,000 of The Last Puritan sold to the Book-of-the-Month Club. Is this a slip of the finger (I suppose we should now say) for the original 35 or 40 thousand, or did they actually take 60,000 for the same $10,000 originally agreed upon? If the latter, am I right in thinking that the sales, so far, amount to 148,755 copies? Certainly I should be glad if you would send a duplicate of this report to my nephew George Sturgis, or to his attorneys, if you prefer, because he is much exercised about the question of taxes. As income tax is grad-
5:366
The Letters of George Santayana
uated, and these $30,000, to be received in December, count officially as income, though for me, of course, they are capital, he fears that my whole income for this year may put me in a category where the income tax paid by you will not suffice. I am, as you know, neither a business man nor a lawyer, and the responsibility for keeping within the law falls upon him; so that it is only fair that he should have the fullest information on the subject. We have arranged, my nephew and I, to take this occasion, which will never recur, to lay by a sum of money in my name (my other property being already in trust) so that at my death it may be distributed according to my wishes. That might absorb $25,000 out of the $30,000; and the other $5,000 I will take as pocket-money, to be added to my London bank-account. I mention this, in case there is any technical advantage in making out the future cheque in two parts. Otherwise, I should endorse the whole in favour of my nephew, and ask him to send me the odd $5,000 to London by a special draft. An unknown English correspondent, Mr. Frank Rutter,1 sends me the two corrections to The Last Puritan which I note on a separate leaf.2 Yours sincerely GSantayana Corrections in “The Last Puritan” page 511. “Lent term” should read “Hilary term” page 549. “Condor” should read “Conder” 1
Unidentified. These corrections were never made in either the Scribner’s or Constable texts of the novel. They were, however, emended into the critical edition. 2
To George Sturgis 17 August 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Victoria Glion-s.-Montreux Aug. 17, 1936 Dear George I write again to say I have received your letter enclosing one from Rita Ingersoll. She is right in thinking that my Christian name was given me in memory of your grandfather. It was (at least nominally) your Aunt
1933–1936
5:367
Susie’s doing. You know she was my godmother, and always took that office quite seriously. And she had a great way of encouraging herself in sentiment about old things, working herself up, against the feeling prevalent round her, to enthusiasm for her old impressions. In this way she became intensely Catholic in Puritan Unitarian Boston, and finally married Celedonio, because he had been one of her early beaux. So, rememout hardly seven when he bering her father a little (she must have been — ab— died) she wanted to give me his name. George is not a name familiar in Spain. The national military saint is Santiago (supposed to be St. James, the Apostle) not St. George. But nobody objected, or thought it decent to object, and so George I became, for better or for worse; although they did add Agustín for my father and Nicolás for his brother the Major, who was my godfather.1 Thank you (to go on with family matters) for the correct list of your great grandfather’s children. I see both your aunt Susie and I were wrong about your grandfather: he was neither the sixth son nor the sixth child of his parents, but the fifth son and the ninth child. I have written to have the point corrected, for conscience’ sake. You will have received or will receive shortly a report from Scribner about my royalties. They amount, up to Aug. 1–st to roughly $30,000; and it seems that the total sales of The Last Puritan, at that date, had been 148,775. You will see how matters stand regarding income-tax, which has already been paid, partly at 4 and partly at 10 percent. The money is to come in December, and I propose to let you have $25,000 to put in a bank or banks in my name, to cover the legacies or gifts which I should like to leave at my death: the other $5,000 odd, I will keep for my London bank account. Probably the simplest way to arrange this would be for me to endorse the whole to you, and to have you send me my remainder by draft afterwards, or to B. S. & Co directly. Yours affly G.S. 1
Don Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana of Badumès in the province of Santander was married to Doña María Antonio Reboiro of Zamora.
5:368
The Letters of George Santayana
To John Hall Wheelock 17 August 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
(MS: Princeton)
Hotel Victoria Glion-s.-Montreux Aug. 17, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock. A small error of fact in my “Brief History of my Opinions” has come to my notice just after returning the proofs. I am sorry to trouble you, but enclose the correction on another sheet, that you may have it made more conveniently. Yours sincerely GSantayana Santayana’s “Brief History of my Opinions” in “Selections” In paragraph 3 52. Gal. I line 2 “sixth” should read: fifth
To Benjamin De Casseres 21 August 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
(MS: Unknown)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Glion, Aug. 21, 1936 Dear Mr. De Casseres Certainly you may publish anything I may have written to you about your works. Speaking of so free-spoken a man one may allow oneself a little spontaneity of expression. Thank you for several little volumes or pamphlets which I have received and read with frequent entertainment. You are naughtier than Emerson and even the Walt Whitman: but, thank God, we live in another age. Yours sincerely GSantayana
1933–1936
To Constable and Co. Ltd. 21 August 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
5:369
(MS: Temple)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London. S.W.1 Hotel Victoria Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland. Aug. 21, 1936
Constable & Company London Thank you for the news that you are publishing my “Obiter Scripta.” If you will kindly send me one copy, it will be enough, as I am travelling, and never have room for storing books. Yours faithfully GSantayana
To Milton Karl Munitz 21 August 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
(MS: Munitz)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Glion, Aug. 21, 1936
Dear Mr. Munitz1 Thank you for sending me your article (it is hardly a review of Obiter Scripta) together with Dewey’s truly admirable criticism of my novel.2 He is penetrating and generous. The only thing that perhaps I miss, as in almost all the reviews that have reached me, is a feeling for the radical cause of Oliver’s worldly failures. Dewey at least goes half way towards explaining them when he says that Oliver was a Puritan, not by education or tradition, but by nature. He was qualitatively like Christ or Buddhas, but quantitatively, alas, insufficient. This leads directly back to your article: because why couldn’t Oliver plunge hopefully into the very mixed vortex of the L. of R.?3 Because, being born very old indeed, he adhered to a post-rational morality, and began with the second mood of my philosophy. –Let [ me observe, by the way, that this was not the second, but the first mood — of in my life, and
5:370
The Letters of George Santayana
even — of in my writings, if you include the verse. I had to move from it to the Greek mood of the L. of R.; so that my “second” phase is really the third: the synthesis, if you like, of my thesis (pessimism) and my antithesis, (humanism) –] . The Columbia interpretation of my two literary periods /, (obvious also ^ ^ in my style) errs, as it seems to me, in both parts. In respect to the second period this was to be expected, because you are very modern, and I react against modernness. The misinterpretation is more annoying in regard to the period which you approve of. You call this period naturalistic, as if I were less a naturalist or materialist now. The right epithet would be humanistic. The L. of R. is so humanistic that it might almost seem not naturalistic at all, but idealistic. If the next to the last paragraph in your article is meant to represent what I then conceived, it is a complete travesty. My naturalism was never like Dewey’s, without the realm of matter in the background, but was like Spinoza’s or like that of Lucretius, who gives an admirable sketch of “the phases of human progress”.4 I have become in my later and freer years less humanistic, not less naturalistic. Essence is not a departure from naturalism, but a logical term, important, as it seems to me, in clearing away psychologism and pictorial realism (anti-naturalistic poetic views) and in giving a free hand to imag^ ^ ination without risk of deception or mythologizing. Spirit, too, as I conceive it, is perfectly natural being bred by the material psyche in the act of bridging transorganic and cognitive relations. For this very reason Spirit, though natural in its seat and in its movement, is universal in its scope: and hence the conflict — it between it and the world, the flesh, and the devil. Spirit, though passionate and “practical” in a missionary sense, because it wants to be saved, is not humanistic or political. It has always spoken through poets and mystics: it is more immediate than reason, and more universal, being the sympathy awakened in the human organism by infra-human and ultra-human powers. I can’t go fully into this subject, but Scribner is about to publish a special edition of my “Works”, in 14 volumes. I have written a preface to vol. VII.5 precisely on the subject of your article, and also a general preface that may be worth looking into for the purposes of your thesis, which I hope may bring you good luck. Yours sincerely GSantayana P.S. You may quote or print any part of this letter, if you find it apropos.
1933–1936
5:371
1 Milton Karl Munitz (1913–95), an educator and author, taught philosophy for nearly fifty years at various institutions including Queens College and New York University. Munitz wrote and edited many books of philosophy, among them The Moral Philosophy of Santayana (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936). 2 Munitz, “Santayana’s Philosophy,” Columbia Review 17 (May–June 1936): 51–56; and Dewey, “Santayana’s Novel,” ibid.: 49–51. 3 Life of Reason. 4 Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 99–c. 55 B.C.) was the Roman poet of the unfinished De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), a didactic poem in six books which set forth a complete science of the universe based on the philosophies of Democritus and Epicurus. The central theme was that all things operate according to their own laws and are not influenced by supernatural powers. Lucretius hoped to free men from the yoke of religious superstition and the fear of death. 5 This volume contains Winds of Doctrine and Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 26 August 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
(MS: Columbia)
Glion, Aug 26, 1936 Dear Cory All is well here, I have a nice room, not very large, on the second floor, rcs and the bill for the first week, including 12 f . for the motor to bring me rcs. from Montreux, was about 170 f There are not many guests—20, perhaps—and no noisy conversations. The food is not bad, but rather domestic. I think they are compelled to practice the strictest economy. One night, however, at 2 a.m, I was awakened by loud cries or groans, apparently next door, culminating in a piercing shrie —eik (how is it spelled?) followed by a few diminishing moans and then perfect silence. In the midst of this, I had also heard the dull thump of a heavy body jumping bear —arefoot out of bed on to the parquet floor. Was it a husband raping his wife? There are no young couples, and if these were the sounds of a bridal night the pair must have been rather elderly. Perhaps they had put it off too long. There has been no repetition: not even those soft nocturnal murmurs that one sometimes hears in hotels. My Chapter II.1 (not that later ones don’t exist, but that this has been detached from Chapter I) is almost done, and I think it is satisfactory. I go every other day, or so, down to tea at Montreux, where the tea places are well frequented and there is a good deal to amuse the eye. Otherwise, I take a very short walk after lunch in the direction of Les Avants.
5:372
The Letters of George Santayana
148,000 copies of the novel had been sold on Aug. 1st I am to get $30,000—in December. Yours affly G.S. 1
Of Truth.
To Charles Augustus Strong 26 August 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Victoria, Glion Aug. 26, 1936 Dear Strong I am glad to hear that you are seeing amusing things and that your proof-reading still keeps you profitably occupied. What are you going to take up next? Everything here is as expected: few people, simple food, and no anxieties. The 16 francs were meant to cover pension and room: my first week’s bill, including 12 francs for the motor to bring me up from Montreux on my arrival, was about 170 francs. I have a light Neuchâtel wine; a bottle lasts two days. When I go down to Montreux to tea, which is about every other day, things look more lively and the tea-places are crowded. The weather, after a week of rain has become sunny, but not too warm for sleeping comfortably. What interests me to know particularly about Cannes is precisely this question of temperature—and insects, of which there are practically none here. Would the Riviera be a place where I could live after my usual fashion all the year round? In that case I might be tempted to leave Rome, as soon as the necessity of travelling becomes too much for me. You say nothing of your health, which I assume to be normal. Do you have a “bath-chair”—if not a “bathing-machine”—and /tdo you bask on the beach in the midst of the nudities? I shouldn’t mind the nudities, but couldn’t stand the glare. Yours ever G.S.
1933–1936
To Otto Kyllmann 28 August 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
5:373
(MS: Temple)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, S.W.1
Glion, Aug. 28, 1936 Dear Mr. Kyllmann It is a pleasant surprise to see that you have reprinted Obiter Scripta and added one to my row of purple volumes.1 I expected, at most, that you would put a new title-page to the American book, as for The Life of Reason. In this form it seems more attractive than in Scribner’s edition, which is meant for a schoolbook. I have found, in dipping into the volume, no typographical errors, except in the French towards the end. Evidently nobody who knows French was asked to read the proof, since these errors are obvious and spoil the sense, slight as they are in themselves. I enclose a list of them on a separate sheet.2 Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Constable publications of Santayana’s works are all bound in a similiar royal blue cover. 2 Unlocated.
To George Sturgis 31 August 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Victoria, Glion Aug. 31, 1936 Dear George This morning I have received a telegram addressed to Rome from Rafael. He says: “We are all well in Avila”. The Spanish wording rather suggests that he means, We are all well and all in Avila. If that is the case, it is lucky, because Pepe’s family have been living in Madrid, and I was afraid they might have been caught there. I daresay Rafael & Luis are working with the new local authorities. The dark spot is the future, and whether Pepe’s boys are in personal danger.1 I am answering the telegram, but don’t know whether from here they can connect with Avila.
5:374
The Letters of George Santayana
There is a matter that I ought to have mentioned long ago. When I was leaving Rome the Hon. — Ac Cesare Pinchetti, the proprietor of the Hotel Bristol, came to wish me godspeed and said I ought to procure a new kind of letter of credit, in Italian lire, which is issued by the Italian government on favourable terms, with a saving for the tourist, I think he said, of 20%. Pinchetti is a member of parlaiment and head of the Fascist association of hotel-keepers, so that he ought to be well-informed. He admitted that I am hardly a tourist, but thought nevertheless I should come within the provisions of measure. I doubt this very much, because, as you know, my official domicile is in Rome. I am registered at the Spanish consulate as residing at the Hotel Bristol. I suspect that a resident foreigner would not be expected to draw his income perpetually on terms designed to attract travellers. If you think it worth while to make inquiries, it might possibly be worth while. In any case, I should like to have something to say to Pinchetti, if he discovers that I am not following his advice. th Probably I shall return to Rome earlier this year, about September 20– , as this place gets rather cool in the autumn. It is lovely now, and I live by my balcony wide open to the Lake and sky. Yours affly G.S. 1 Pepe’s sons were Eduardo (b. 1915) and Roberto (c. 1915–39). Roberto, having been wounded twice, was killed while fighting on the falangist side in the Spanish civil war.
To Charles P. Davis 6 September 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
(MS: Columbia)
C
/o Brown, Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Glion, Sept. 6, 1936 Dear Davis, It is all right about your not liking my book. Of course, it isn’t a novel in the ordinary sense; it is a study of characters and moral contrasts. No obligation on anybody to like it. But I should be curious to know in what direction you and your friends find it wrong: plot, style, morality, tone, character-drawing, or what? The book is done: I shall never write another “novel”, you may at least take comfort in that; but your judgements would tell me what you and your friends are attached to, and that is always inter-
1933–1936
5:375
esting. The last American novel I have read is Faulkner’s “Sanctuary”. Do you like that? And how about Aldous Huxley’s “Eyeless in Gaza”?1 As to the success of my novel with the public and the reviewers, it has been immense. 148,000 copies were sold in the U.S. before Aug. 1–st, in England less than 10,000. But of course I am making money—not yet paid, most of it. Altogether, when the harvest is all in, it will not be far from $50,000. I am being translated into French, Spanish, and German, and printed in raised letters (in England) to be read by the blind! Me and the Bible. As to the Spanish row, the extreme feebleness of all Spanish governments has allowed the latent conflict which exists in all ripe countries to ^ ^ break out there openly: first by overturning the Parlaimentary cabinets (mere political cliques) and then the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera2— which was materially the best régime we have ever had in my lifetime—and finally the monarchy. Since then we have had only anarchy; even when the better sort had a majority in the Cortes and a finger in the pie, there was no leadership or courage to do anything thoroughly. And public opinion is sceptical and divided: nobody trusts anybody or has practical ability: so that when they tire of quarrelling, they can do nothing but fight. I was in Paris for two months this summer, and got the impression that the same conflict is brewing in France: but the fear of Germany acts as a brake on their worst divisions. What is it all about? The conflict between institutions and the town-proletariat-and-their-leaders, full of atheist phith losophy and utopian socialism. The lazy 19– century capitalism and private luxury will have to disappear sooner or later, and we shall have some kind of paternal government, of the Left or of the Right. I like the Italian solution: not for an ideal for ever or for every country: but for a regimen, a cure, for disorganized nations. In Italy, and apparent ly in Russia and ^ ^ Germany also, there is at least energy and enthusiasm. Things get done, everybody looks brisk and happy. Even the papers are decent and wellinformed: monotonous, of course, as everything is inspired by the government; but better and better worth reading, I find, than the more dishonest leading press of other countries: e.g. the London Times and the Paris Temps. Goodbye & good luck. I don’t say: Come to Rome, because I have said it before. Yours sincerely G. S.
5:376
The Letters of George Santayana
P.S. A day or two ago I received a telegram from Rafael (my sister’s stepson) by way of Rome, saying that they were all well in Avila. When you get this letter, the military situation may have developed, but I don’t anticipate that Avila will be attacked. True, as you say, it is very near the line dividing the two factions: but that line is a chain of high mountains; north and west of Avila all is quietly in the hands of the “insurgents”;3 and the attack on Madrid is going on rather further east, as if from Segovia, and then also (if the insurgents succeed) from the south west, up the Tagus. Rafael and his brothers are doubtless heart and soul with the insurgents; and there are two boys of military age who may be actually fighting. But I think there is little danger of the Cathedral and other monuments in Avila being destroyed. Even if the government, or rather the Reds, are victorious, by the time they get round to Avila they will be tired of arson, murder, and pillage. They will feel safe, and perhaps willing generously to allow the stones to remain upon the stones. It would be persons and property that would be seized: but let us hope that may be averted. I don’t know how much Anglo-Saxon prejudice (as against Italy too) influences your American views: but you mustn’t suppose that in Spain now the government stands for peace and order and the insurgents for revolution. It is precisely the other way. The government (which has changed twice since the war began) has no authority, and simply legalizes the action [across] of the Red conspirators. It is they that are waging war on Spain, with the Catalonians5 and some Basques who have always hated to be Spanish. 1
Eyeless in Gaza (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1936). In 1923 General Miguel Primo de Rivera (1870–1930) took over the Spanish government by a military coup. He dissolved the Spanish Parliament or Cortes. Rivera’s military dictatorship was superceded in 1925 by a civil government, with him serving as prime minister. Though in 1927 he sponsored a program of economic reform and public works, his semi-fascist regime ignored Spain’s social problems: a feudal situation constituted by a landholding aristocracy and an embittered peasantry; an enormously wealthy Church with control of education; and a poor and dissatisfied industrial proletariat in the large cities. Rivera, under pressure from republican opponents, resigned in 1930. He was succeeded by various military figures. In 1931 forced elections were won by republican candidates. King Alfonso XIII had to leave Spain, and the second Spanish republic was proclaimed. The republic ruled until July 1936 when a military coup headed by General Francisco Franco led to the Spanish civil war in 1939 and the beginning of Franco’s Fascist dictatorship. 3 The Fascist forces under Franco. 4 Catalonia, in northeast Spain, stretches from the Pyrenees southward along the Mediterranean. Traditionally rebellious against central government, Catalonia obtained self-government in 1932–34 and 1936–39; in the civil war it resisted Franco, who abolished its autonomy. 2
1933–1936
To George Sturgis 11 September 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
5:377
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Victoria, Glion-sur-Montreux, Sept. 11, 1936 Dear George It is too bad that Mrs. Toy should have had this notion of sending me a book through you. It is like my writing to Mrs. Ames through you: you seem to be the one universal confidant. But in this case, I don’t see what Mrs. Toy’s real reason could have been: what she says is only talk. Besides I have a copy already of Three Centuries of Harvard, sent by the author.1 I am therefore posting your (or her) copy back to the Old Corner Bookstore, and writing to them, explaining why I do so. Keep the book for yourself, if you or the boys care to have it, or do anything else you like about it. I don’t understand whether you or Mrs. Toy paid for it. As to her, she will know that I had already received and read the book, because I wrote to her about it some time ago. I don’t want to give you more trouble, and keep treating you as an errand-boy; but as you and Mrs. Toy seem to be on good terms, if you should be having a conversation with her by telephone, for instance, you might find out if she has Van Wyck Brooks’ recent book The Flowering of New England.2 If not, you might have it sent to her from me. It is first rate. Yours affly, G. S. P.S. I expect to leave for Rome in 10 days. 1 Samuel Eliot Morison (1887–1976), Harvard class of 1908 (Ph.D., 1912), was an American historian and author of The Development of Harvard University, 1869–1929, fourth volume of Tercentennial History of Harvard College and University (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930) and Three Centuries of Harvard 1636–1936 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936). 2 A Harvard graduate, Van Wyck Brooks (1886–1963) became a leading American literary critic and historian of American culture. His major work is the five-volume Makers and Finders: A History of the Writer in America, published during 1936–52. Brooks perceived a division in the American character (idealistic and materialistic) deriving from Puritanism, which is paralleled in Santayana’s analysis of American culture, particularly in Puritan. Brooks’s The Flowering of New England, 1815–1865 (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1936) was awarded a Pulitzer Prize.
5:378
The Letters of George Santayana
To Llewelyn Powys 13 September 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
(MS: Beinecke)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Glion, Sept. 13, 1936 Dear Mr. Powys The name of Miss Alyse Gregory takes me back to the days when I occasionally wrote for The Dial,1 and although I have never had the pleasure of seeing her, I am glad to know that time has been leading her into pleasant paths. You have written the history of the cosmos in 120 pages, and naturally there has not been room to put in everything. As you know, I am in hearty agreement with your naturalism and with your affection for Epicurus. You are tender to “country-matters”, in every sense of these words; that is so much to the good; but perhaps it throws the intellectual and political sides of the life of reason too much into the shade. What you seem to leave out is expressed in one phrase by that free lance, Mr. De ^ ^ Casseres, in a booklet which, since it is dedicated to you, I suppose you must have seen.2 He says: (p. 49) “Repulsion, hatred, opposition—“Room for me, or thou diest”—are the conditions of individuality! And I think that in history the power of words and doctrines is nothing to the power of circumstances and of biological impulses. For instance, in all ages some people have seen the fabulous character of religion: Giordano Bruno, Machiavelli, Erasmus, and Bacon, not to speak of Montaignex, saw it, whereas Luther and Calvin were stone-blind:3 but society was not ready for light, and wanted to satisfy its national and economic ambitions under the cloak of superstition, suitably modified. At least, that is my diagnosis. [across ] x and Rabelais, Thank you very much for your little book, so full of sights and sounds, as well as of philosophy.4 Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 The Dial, which originated in Chicago, moved to New York City, where it encouraged modernist developments in literature and the other arts. Under Scofield Thayer’s direction, the magazine printed work by many of the distinguished authors of the time; its issues also provided a showcase for modern painting. 2 Unidentified.
1933–1936
5:379
3 Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), an Italian philosopher whose metaphysical works challenged dogmatic authority, maintained that each man’s view of the world is relative to his position, that any absolute truth is beyond statement and that possible knowledge is unlimited. He was burned at the stake for heresy and was a martyr for freedom of thought. Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) was an Italian author and statesman, an outstanding figure of the Renaissance. His most famous book, The Prince, had great influence on analysis of political power. Francis Bacon (1561–1626), an English philosopher and statesman, introduced the inductive method of modern experimental science to philosophy. His Essays (1597) are his most popular works. Michel Eyquem seigneur de Montaigne (1533–92), a French moralist and creator of the personal essay, served as a magistrate and then mayor of Bordeaux. His philosophy was that of scepticism. Martin Luther (1483–1546) was a German religious reformer. His critique of the Roman Catholic Church’s practices is regarded as the original document of the Reformation. Luther’s principal contention was that man is justified by faith alone, not by works. He favored the abolition of church rituals and challenged the supreme authority of the pope. John Calvin ( Jean Cauvin, 1509–64) was a French Protestant reformer whose theological doctrines had tremendous influence, particularly in the Puritan religion of England, Scotland, and later America. Calvinism as a religious system recognized only the Bible as a source of knowledge and authority in questions of belief. 4 Possibly The Twleve Months (London: J[ohn] L[ane] The Bodley Head, 1936).
To Robert Shaw Barlow 16 September 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
(MS: Houghton)
Glion-sur-Montreux Sept. 16, 1936 Dear Bob George Sturgis had written to me about your illness. I am glad to know that you are back in your own quarters—that is always more comfortable, at least for the mind—and that you are progressing towards complete recovery. As to my letter, my memory for recent minor events is wretched, and I hardly remember what I said in it; but if you think it would interest the public, I am willing to have it published; we get at last to a point where we see how little it matters what we have said or done. Only, as this letter was private, and meant only for you, I may have used some terms that might offend Faulkner. I should be sorry for that, because besides being discourteous, it would misrepresent my feeling which on the whole is one of sympathy with him and his experiments in style. So expunge, please, any phrase that may seem too strong.
5:380
The Letters of George Santayana
I was sorry to miss Barley, but this summer has not been a peaceful one for me; Paris was not a success, and now I am flying (not literally) back to Rome, as here it is becoming too wet and cold. Yours ever G.S.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 16 September 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
(MS: Columbia)
Glion, Sept. 16, 1936 Dear Cory My ticket for Rome is taken for next Monday, the 21–st; by leaving here after lunch I can conveniently reach the Hotel Bristol for breakfast the next morning. The weather is getting rather cold and wet in these regions, and I sha’n’t mind a last spell of summer before autumn sets in for good. Before leaving I am thinking of sending you four or five chapters of Truth. Have them typed, and send me one of the copies, preferably the carbon one. I am well aware that there are repetitions and longeurs1 in these chapters; but the text is already too much patched, and my mind is too tired of the theme, for making now any judicious changes. Later, rereading the typed text, I shall be able to get a fresh impression, and you must help me by marking the faults—literary or philosophical—that you may notice. This is about half the book: the second part about the truth of futures, determinism, fate, moral truth, and the love, hatred, and denial of truth will, I think, go more easily and be more interesting. It will help me to feel that the first part is done, to send it away and have it typewritten. Duron threatens to turn up the day after tomorrow, but he is so unreliable that perhaps he will find he is prevented. I should have invited him, if I were not afraid of finding him a nuisance and having him stay too long. Anyhow, he knows that I leave on the 21–st I have had three communications from friends in Spain. 1–st a telegram from Rafael Sastre, one of my sister’s step-sons, saying they are all well in nd Avila. 2– a letter from my old cousin Manuela (aged 68) from Madrid, saying she is ill, but not disturbed by any public disorders: the letter, except the signature was not in her hand-writing, and was marked “censored”: probably she was obliged to say all was quiet in Madrid in order rd a letter from Marichalar (who has translated some to let the letter pass. 3– of my things) from Saint-Jean-de-Luz,2 saying he has got away from six
1933–1936
5:381
week of terror, by airplane, from Madrid, and explaining that the report of his being on the government side was inaccurate. He had (in order to help save Ortega y Gasset’s life) joined in a verbal declaration that he was not concerned in the insurrection (he calls it the movement) but without condemning Fascism.3 This had been turned by the [across ] radio and press (e.g. The London Times) into the false news that I had been surprised to hear. G.S. Yours affly 1
Lengthy or slow passages (French). A French coastal town just north of the Spanish border. 3 Ortega did not support either faction in the conflict and was in voluntary exile during the Spanish civil war (1936–39). He did not return to Spain until 1945. 2
To George Sturgis 19 September 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
(MS: Houghton)
Glion. Sept. 19, 1936 Dear George Today I have received a letter from Mercedes. She says she has not received your July remittance. Her letter was taken by a friend to Coimbra, in Portugal, and posted from there. I don’t know whether my reply will reach her, but the post-office here accepted it at the sender’s risk. She says they allow people to cash only 500 pesetas at a time; so I sent her a cheque for only £15, but I will send her more, if she receives and can collect this one. She suggests that you should send her next draft through me, but I see no advantage in that except that I may have later news of the means of communication. The frontier between Galicia and Portugal seems to be open. I leave for Rome on the day after tomorrow. I take for granted that you know Mercedes’ address: Bayona de Galicia, Vigo. The Vigo bank where she is known is the Banco HispanoAmericano. If it were possible for you to communicate with that bank, it might be the quickest way of relieving her want of cash. Yours affy G.S.
5:382
The Letters of George Santayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 20 September 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
(MS: Unknown)
Glion, Sept. 20, 1936 Dear Cory I sent you yesterday five or six chapters on Truth, and should be glad if you would acknowledge the receipt of them, to relieve my mind of a certain anxiety I always have when my MS are in the post. [X]1 came, stayed one night, and went. He says he is a Catholic, but looks and thinks like a Jew. He was very officious, when he saw that I was amiable and yielding, and asked to have these chapters sent to him to copy, instead of to you. At first, vaguely, I said I saw no objection; and he agreed to send you one of the copies he should make. He was leaving, and although I at once felt that this arrangement was risky and foolish, I let him go without saying anything, but have written explaining that on second thoughts I felt that it would be better to have copies made first, and to let him have the MS later. So, when you have had it typed, I wish you would send him the original. I leave tomorrow at 2 p.m. and arrive in Rome at 8 a.m. on Tuesday. Yours affly G.S. 1
Jacques Duron.
To Horace Meyer Kallen 20 September 1936 • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland C
(MS: YIVO)
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Glion-s-Montreux Sept. 20, 1936 Dear Kallen I have been reading your plea for the consumer with greater pleasure, perhaps, than any of your previous books.1 You are a capital impressionist in history, and I have learned a good deal—forgotten again, I fear,— about industrial politics. Naturally I sympathize with your individualistic and hedonistic ethics, being also an Epicurean; and even your equality
1933–1936
5:383
amongst different people appeals to me in respect to material needs, where individuals are really comparable. I should have been happy to live in a communistic society where every one had his cell, his ration, and his appointed garments, according to age, climate, and employment. But when it comes to intellectual and moral consumption, I am afraid the consumer is a parasite, and his ideal self-destructive: because if he, or oth^^ ers before him, hadn’t spontaneously produced music or philosophy or language or religion, he would have nothing to consume, and would live and die a free idiot. However, I won’t quarrel with your productions which I have consumed, but offer you my best thanks in exchange. [across ] Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 The Decline and Rise of the Consumer: A Philosophy of Consumer Cooperation (New York and London: D. Appleton-Century Co., Inc., 1936).
To John Hall Wheelock 22 September 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome, Sept. 22, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock Today, having arrived in Rome at 8 a.m. I am able to send you the photographs of the apse in the cathedral of Avila. They used to lie about on bookcases and tables in my room, and perhaps are too faded to be reproduced. However, they will give you an idea of the place, and of the lovely (Italian?) tomb of Dr. Tostado, who wrote three folios (sheets, I suppose) daily, according to the inscription. If you place the two photos close together, although they repeat a part of the same wall, they give a general impression very like that produced by the reality, as you walk round the apse. The broken corner could also be hidden by making the two views overlap a little. Yours sincerely GSantayana
5:384
The Letters of George Santayana
To John Hall Wheelock 23 September 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Sept. 23, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock th Your letter of Sept. 10– calls for a reply on two points. You speak of sending me my “copies” of vols. I & II of the Triton Edition when pub^ ^ th lished about October 15– If this means that I am entitled to more than one copy of the entire set,—a point not mentioned, I think, in the agreement— I will ask you to send me only one copy of each volume, when it appears, as that is all I can find room for, and don’t see friends here to whom I could pass on any extra copies. But there are persons to whom in any case I should wish copies to be sent: and I enclose the list.1 Please have the volumes, as they are published, sent to these addresses, and charged to my account, if they exceed the number of author’s copies allowed. The other point regards a portrait of my mother that George Sturgis has in his possession. I don’t know what portrait this is: probably one taken in later life. That is not the one I should choose as best indicating her temperament and influence on myself; and in any case I should like to preserve all family portraits for my Autobiography, which includes accounts of my Mother. I also have photos taken [illegible ]by me in person of the Harvard Yard seen from my room in 1896, and of the room itself, which I [across left margin] purposely have kept back as more suitable for a later occasion. So please not to substitute my mother for [across right margin] any of the proposed frontispieces, which seem excellent. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Unlocated.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 26 September 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Sept. 26, 1936 Dear Cory Don’t be troubled about Duron and his intervention. I thoroughly dislike him; he isn’t really appreciative, as Edman is, but he has me for the
1933–1936
5:385
subject of his Doctor’s thèse, which is an honour, and he went to the trouble and expense of coming to Glion to see me. I found at once that he is at sea about essences, finding a mystery in the unanimity with which things go and agree with their essences! Hopeless. But I have already gone back on the promise to send him those chapters first; and I think there is no danger in letting him have them after we have the copies. The fact that they are to be revised and perhaps radically cut down or added to—the titles don’t always correspond to the contents exactly—only renders them less important. And perhaps he may discover in them some phrases useful for his thèse. So I wish you would send him the manuscript, as soon as you get it back: and that will end my obligations to him in the matter. I wasn’t in the least nervous about the journey this time; but I was tired that day (it was two days before I started) with a long talk we had had (in ^ French) after lunch sitting on the terrace; an unsatisfactory irritating talk. ^ He has not replied to my letter. Perhaps he is mortally offended and we may never hear from him again. Hurrah! It is very warm in Rome, sirocco1 since I arrived; but I rather enjoy the heat, and feel very well. My clothes are in their places, the books all unpacked and arranged in one morning, without fatigue, and my rooms very nice in fresh paint, washed walls, and a magnificent double wardrobe in walnut instead of the little white one that stood in the corner. Pinchetti refused to lower my rent—said rents were rising—but evidently has laid himself out to do me well. The food also seems better than last year, and all the servants very attentive. Yours affy G.S. [across] P.S. If £5 insufficient for type-writing, say so. 1
Sirocco is a hot, oppressive, dust-laden wind from the Libyan desert that blows on the northern Mediterranean coast.
To Charles Augustus Strong 27 September 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Sept. 27, 1936 Dear Strong I arrived here last Tuesday the 22nd at 8 a.m. and am comfortably settled for the next eight months.
5:386
The Letters of George Santayana
Perhaps you have seen in The Times a letter of Marichalar explaining how the report got about that he was favourable to the Madrid government. Besides that communication he has sent me a letter from St.-Jeande-Luz, saying that after six week of terror he was able to escape to France in an aeroplane. As a Catholic, a marquis, and a disciple of Ortega y Gasset, who passes for the Spanish philosopher of Fascism, he was suspect to the government; but when Ortega’s life seemed to be in danger—has he survived, I wonder?—Marichalar joined in a verbal declaration that he had taken no part in the “movement”, but without making any mention of Fascism. It was this declaration that led to the false report which you showed me in The Times. I have had no less than three messages from Spain direct: a letter from Mercedes dated at Vigo but posted in Coimbra in Portugal; a letter from my cousin Manuela in Madrid, saying she was ill but that the town was “tranquil”; and a telegram from Avila, saying they were all well there. I have answered all three, of course, but doubt whether my replies have reached their destination. Yours ever G.S.
To Charles Augustus Strong 1 October 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 1, 1936 Dear Strong Marie hasn’t written to me. I gave her something, 300 francs, I think, when I went to see her in Paris; and she expects a cheque from me for the New Year. They seemed to be comfortable then, (in July) but of course ^ ^ I don’t know how much they can allow themselves for food. I can’t thank you intelligently for the picture, as it hasn’t yet arrived Yours ever G.S.
1933–1936
To Benjamin P. Schwartz 5 October 1936 • Rome, Italy C
5:387
(MS: Columbia)
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Oct. 5, 1936 Dear Mr. Schwartz It seems to me that the time to publish any letters of mine that may be destined for that honour has not quite arrived. Wait until I am dead. My demise will be a good occasion for advertising for any epistles that anybody may possess. I will tell you in confidence—in case you or Mr. Buchler should wish then to undertake the task—that my principal continuous correspondence has been with Mrs. Crawford H. Toy, now living at 1 Waterhouse Street, Cambridge, Mass. I know she has preserved my letters; but she is an old lady, and may not survive me. So are most of my former correspondents—not ladies, but old—and heaven knows whether they have kept my letters, or whether their children or heirs have not burned them. However, I have written a vast number in all these years, and if they could be summoned to arise and gather themselves together at the blast of the trumpet, you would have a pretty task in reading them over. However, there is another question involved, which is that of the advisability of printing any letters, the need of selecting the right ones, and of editing them judiciously, I don’t mean by altering them substantially (errors or slips might well be corrected) as in leaving out indiscreet words or trivial prattle. You, as I understand, are young, you haven’t known me personally, and I will tell you quite frankly that I don’t think you are the person to assume, as yet, that sort of responsibility towards the public and towards my reputation. If it were a question of merely philosophical letters, it would be different, because you and Mr. Buchler have proved, in Obiter Scripta, that you are admirable interpreters of my work. But almost all my letters, even if touching on public or theoretical questions, have been personal, and collecting and editing them would require special tact and special knowledge of my feelings about my friends. Moreover, there is a literary executor already chosen to preside over my Nachlass,1 Daniel Cory; and it would naturally fall to him to collect my correspondence, as well as to edit my remaining manuscripts, if he thought it advisable. I hope, if I live long enough, to write my own life, so
5:388
The Letters of George Santayana
that a biography—especially as there are no events to record—would be superfluous. You have seen, of course, the English edition of Obiter Scripta. They have made some bad slips in the passage from Proust: one, which I had not noticed before, is also in the American edition: p. 275, line 23. “qui prend,” should be “que prend”. I haven’t the text, but the rather difficult sense requires it. I haven’t yet had any return from Scribner about the sale of the book, but the reviews seem to have been friendly. Could you do me a favour? It is to make a copy of “Natural Leadership”, published in The New Republic, 31 July, 1915.2 This, like “The Indomitable Individual”,* was written for my political wok /rk, “Dominations & Powers”, not yet quite finished, and I can find no copy of that fragment among my papers.3 I may rewrite the section—the book is in short chapters—but should like to have the original before me as a guide. There is no hurry about it: a year hence would do, as I am now deep in the volume on Truth in Realms of Being. Yours sincerely GSantayana [across] * and “A Few Remarks” 1
Literary estate (German). The New Republic, founded in 1914 by Willard D. Straight, was a weekly journal of liberal views and opinions. 3 “The Indomitable Individual,” The New Republic (22 May 1915): 64–66. 2
To George Sturgis 8 October 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton) Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 8, 1936
Dear George I have your letter of Sept. 25. Probably you soon received further letters from me about Mercedes. I have no sure means of communicating with her: have written twice—to Bayona, Vigo, of course: to write to Madrid now is to throw away your letter, and perhaps your money—but I expect she has not received them. Hers were posted for her by a friend who travels into Portugal: the frontier is open to travellers, but apparently
1933–1936
5:389
there is no postal service as yet. In her last, of which I enclose the patrith otic heading1—she says she thought of moving about October 10– to 2 Burgos, to be with her friend Maria Luisa and her five little children, the husband being at the front. Her address there is Villa Florida La Castellana Burgos but I daresay it would be as useless to write as yet to Burgos as to Bayona or Vigo. I have told her to borrow money or run up bills if she is in straits, because her back allowance will be paid up as soon as we can manage it: but of course her friends are as hard up as she, and not knowing whether their belongings in Madrid will not have been stolen before they get back there. A part of the calle de Serrano is even reported burnt: but this may be false, and anyhow the street is long and No 7 is hardly likely to have disappeared.3 Yet if there is a long siege, who knows what will happen? You will have thought, on hearing that the Italian lira has been cut down to 60% or less of its former value, that I am going to be compensated for the loss suffered when the dollar was docked: I shall now get 9,500 lire again for my $500, each time I draw money; and that is more than I spend in a month. But I may invite Cory to come and make me a visit, and help me with my volume on “The Realm of Truth” on which I am at work now. That would quickly absorb the surplus. Scribner is going, in December, to send me a separate cheque for $25,000, which I mean to endorse to you. Or would it be better to deposit [across ] it directly in the bank you mean to put it in? Or are there to be several banks and would smaller cheques be better? Yours affly, G.S. 1
Unlocated. Maria Luisa del Rio’s husband was a dentist and surgeon. 3 Mercedes’s principal residence was No. 7, Calle de Serrano, Madrid. 2
5:390
The Letters of George Santayana
To George Sturgis 10 October 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 10, 1936 Dear George No wonder you are troubled about sending remittances to Spain. When you receive this letter the military situation there may have developed, and it may be possible to send money safely: but as things have been, and are at present, there seems to be communication, slow and censored, but possible with Madrid. Only yesterday I received a letter from th there dated Sept 28– which showed that a letter sent to Manuela from Glion had reached her. But with Bayona de Galicia, Vigo, and Avila, I am afraid there is no connection. Mercedes’ letters (as I mentioned the other day) were posted in Portugal. She might have given me the address there of the person who posted them for her, and who apparently travels back and forth from Galicia: but Mercedes either didn’t think of this, or had reasons for not attempting it. Rather stupidly, she asks me to send her money, when I can’t reach her. I have sent her two small cheques, but don’t believe she has received them. As to the Sastres, I should certainly hold their money until things clear up. They have the farm and other resources—three houses in Avila, or rather four, counting my little one—and they can pull through without the American item, which I understand is not now very large. I have heard nothing of them since that telegram from Rafael, and have not written. There remains my cousin Manuela. The letter I received yesterday was from her doctor, (Doctor Marejon,1 Lagasca, 24, bajo, Madrid) who seems an honest, business-like person. He says she has been operated on for “dry gangrene” in the leg—successfully; but that the disease is serious, added to other ailments of hers; and that her condition gives cause for anxiety. (She is 68 years old). He adds that he is also her man of business, and has 2,500 pesetas of hers in his possession. A further sum of 5,000 which she has in the Post-Office Savings bank is not now available. As the hospital where she lies charges 30 pesetas a day, and operations are extra, he fears her funds may not hold out, and therefore informs me of the facts. I am sending him a cheque for £20 on the chance: but by now communications with Madrid (French airplanes, I expect) may be intercepted, and he may never get it. However, he asks that you should send
1933–1936
5:391
Manuela’s “October” draft to the “Sanatorio España, Covarrubios 30, Madrid. Of course, it is too late, or too [across ] soon: but I send you the address in case you think it worth while to despatch a duplicate. Yours affly G. S. 1 Unidentified. In letter of 13 December 1936, Santayana refers to him as Dr. Eduardo Morejon.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 11 October 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 11, 1936 Dear Cory It occurred to me too, at once, that, with the new value for the lira, it would be easier for us to square our accounts in Italy. You can come when ever you like and stay at the Bristol or elsewhere, as you prefer. I shall have enough pocket money to provide for any extras that may occur, without deplenishing my London bank account. If you preferred to join me in summer at Cortina, you can do that instead, or in addition, just as your fancy dictates. It was altogether pleasant to see you last summer in Paris; but Paris no longer attracts me. Besides, there was too much Strong. I want to keep up simple pleasant relations with him to the end; but for this purpose it is better to avoid frequent meetings or discussions. You and I talked too much about him, and too unkindly. Better let all that sleep. He is much gratified now that Macmillan has instantly and (apparently) joyfully agreed to publish his new book. Nevertheless he probably would like to have a few more séances with you, and it is natural that you should wish to please him. You can stop to see him at Cannes—you would enjoy Cannes in winter or spring—or at Fiesole on your return. But you understand these somewhat delicate matters as well or better than I, and you can make your plans accordingly. One more chapter, on “Moral Truth” is finished,1 and I have begun on the important subject of the relations of truth with time; “eternal” truths, truth of futures, logical predetermination, etc. This may make one chapter or several, and much satisfactory stuff is on hand in various old manuscripts. I will try to keep the argument sober and stern, as I see you like strong meat on this subject. There is a certain pleasure and excitement in being ultra-critical and modern, while remaining perfectly orthodox. It is
5:392
The Letters of George Santayana
a novelty; and possibly this volume may secure more public attention and respect than the academic crowd has as yet vouchsafed me. It would be a surprise, and not what I have in mind in writing: but so was the success of the novel. Would you like a book of Logan Pearsall Smith’s on “Reperusals & ReCollections”?2 There is an essay on Pater,3 and a defence of poetic prose; and the quotations are interesting. The Murchie’s4 are coming to tea on the 21–st The new American ambassador is an old friend of mine,5 but not a special [across] friend, and so far I haven’t heard from him. If he does ask me to something, shall I invite him to tea and give him a stale biscuit? G.S. 1
Chapter VIII of Truth. Reperusals and Re-collections was published by Constable in London in 1936. 3 “On Re-Reading Pater.” 4 Guy Murchie (b. 1872) received his A.B. and his LL.B. from Harvard. 5 William “Billy” Phillips (1878–1968), a career diplomat, served as American ambassador to Italy from 1936 until 1940. Phillips received his A.B. from Harvard in 1900 and attended the Law School there until 1903. 2
To Charles Scribner’s Sons 13 October 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS telegram: Princeton)
RX38 IRK36 XFX (COPY) ROMA 19 13 1515 LC SCRIBNER NEWYORK IF POSSIBLE PUT ROSS PORTRAIT AND HARVARD YARD IN VOLUMES THREE AND FOUR LETTER FOLLOWS SANTAYANA
1933–1936
To John Hall Wheelock 13 October 1936 • Rome, Italy C
5:393
(MS: Princeton)
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Oct. 13, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock I am telegraphing asking you, if possible, to put the Ross portrait and the view of the Harvard Yard in volumes three and four of the Triton Edition. Your letter of Oct. 2 caused me to look back to that of Sept. 10, in which you give the list of proposed illustrations. It astonishes me now that I didn’t at once make one or two suggestions, as to the distribution. I was probably preoccupied with other matters and felt sure that you would make the best arrangement possible. Illustrations to philosophical writings are more or less arbitrary in any case: but there is the personal, autobiographical side of the matter, naturally not so vividly present to you as to me. And now that you are in difficulties about vol. III, it seems to me distinctly advisable to bring up the Ross portrait for the frontispiece of the Life of Reason. It was painted somewhat later, but the period and atmosphere is the same. Also the view of the Harvard Yard seems more appropriate to a work written when I still lived in Cambridge (although no longer in those rooms) than when I had absconded to Europe for life. In this way, too, we liberate the drawing of Avila, which is something to be considered sub specie aeternitatis and can be introduced anywhere where there is a vacancy. For instance, in vol. X. I distinctly object to a portrait there: and I am suspicious of this “drawing with a beard”. I had thought it was a drawing from Denman Ross’s painting; but now I see it is an additional drawing, by whom and from what? I tremble lest it should be the dreadful thing that appeared at first on the paper cover of The Last Puritan. Vol. X is to my feeling distinctly the volume poetically and religiously,1 as vol. XIII is the volume philosophically: and the frontispiece should be something impersonal and beautiful. Avila is not that, exactly, but it is a town of churches and old walls, and the birthplace of St. Teresa.2 However, anything poetical would serve: say, a wayside cross in the Dolomites, where “Platonism & the Spiritual Life” was written: or an Attic tombstone;3 or a Sibyl or God creating the World, by Michaelangelo;4 or a Turner sky-scape;5 or even the statue of Spinoza at the Hague, before a
5:394
The Letters of George Santayana
smaller copy of which “Ultimate Religion” was preached by me in the Domus Spinozana. Of course, the apse at Avila, if it could be managed, would please me most. This vol. X is the point where I am most touchy; but I also think that vol. VII, with the preface explaining my second philosophical phase,6 ought not to have a frontispiece associated with the first phase, as the Harvard Yard is. The Ross portrait, if it is too late to put it in vol. III,7 might go into this vol. VII, but I should prefer something else, if it could be found. I am sorry to be fussy and to make trouble, especially when perhaps it is too late. However, no great harm will ensue in any case. As to the unsigned and unnumbered copies of the Triton Edition which you might have to spare, they would do admirably for me and my friends, and I should be much obliged to you for letting me have them gratis. Should there be only one or two, it would be best to send signed copies to the Harvard Library and the Delphic Club in Cambridge, because there they would be treated as museum pieces. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Volume X contains Dialogues, Platonism, “A Long Way Round to Nirvana,” “The Prestige of the Infinite,” and “Ultimate Religion.” 2 Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515–82) was a Spanish Carmelite nun and mystical writer. 3 Attica was the region in ancient Greece around Athens whose art and architecture is marked by simplicity, purity, and refinement. 4 Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475–1564), the Italian sculptor, architect, painter, and poet of the Renaissance, is considered one of the greatest and most influential artists of all time. 5 Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851) was an English landscape painter and a celebrated water-colorist. 6 “On the Unity of My Earlier and Later Philosophy.” 7 Volume III contains the Introduction to The Life of Reason, Common Sense (including the Preface to the second edition), and Society.
To George Sturgis 19 October 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 19, 1936 Dear George Your letter of Oct. 7, with Mr. Young’s letter and the draft of my proposed will, arrived this morning. It would ordinarily have been almost impossible for me to get four English-speaking witnesses together to
1933–1936
5:395
swear to my signature, but by chance at this moment I may be able to manage it. My old friend Guy Murchie is coming to tea here with his wife (whom I don’t know) the day after tomorrow; they are staying at the Excelsior, which is next door to the American Consulate and (official) Embassy, so that it will not be asking too much, I think, to drag at least him to the Consulate, where he can introduce me (I don’t know a soul there) and probably find three other persons willing to say that they are sure I am myself. I do know Billy Phillips; he was a member of the Delta Phi, and intimate friend of Bayard Cutting,1 whom I knew well, and whose daughter Iris (Marchesa Origo) floats about here and is always very nice to me. But he is now Ambassador, and I don’t frequent such high circles, or any circles, so that I sha’n’t appeal to him unless in dire extremity. If we go to the Consulate I can inquire there about the legality of such a will in Italy. They will say it ought to be registered at the Spanish consulate: but that is impossible at present, and undesirable in any case. As to the ownership of my books, papers, and clothes I don’t think Pinchetti the landlord would make any fuss if Cory took quiet posses^ ^ sion of them. He (Cory) has been here repeated ly with me, and I have ^ ^ ^ ^ told them that he is to have my things, and (if I have warning of the end) he would be on the spot at the time. I could even make a formal gift of my books & papers (the clothes are worthless) to him now, if that would help matters. Otherwise I have no property in Italy. We are carrying on such a frequent correspondence that our letters are not answers to our last messages, and there is a temptation to repeat the latter. In December I expect Scribner’s cheques: let me know in what form I had better transmit the $25,000 that, as agreed, are to be invested, or put in the bank, to cover the provisions of this will. As matters stand, Scribner will send that sum in a single cheque: and there would be nothing for me to do but to endorse it to you, or to some bank in Boston where you were to deposit it. I understand that it will be deposited there in my name, not in yours as trustee. Or is the money to be distributed in several banks? [across] I asked you this before, but repeat it because it is rather on my mind. Yours affly G.S. 1
William Bayard Cutting Jr. (1878–1910) received his B.A. from Harvard in 1900. He served as secretary to the Ambassador in the American Embassy in London in 1899, was vice-consul in the American Consulate in Milan (1908–9), and was secretary of the American Legation in Tangier, Morocco (1909).
5:396
The Letters of George Santayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 25 October 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 25, 1936 Dear Cory My first impulse was to sign the blank (which I return) so that you might have your fee paid automatically in future, but there seemed to be some grammatical difficulty in signing my name for yours, and yours wouldn’t do at the bank. So I send you £5 more, for you to pay the bill in cash, including next-year’s.1 Work goes on slowly. As usual, I am tempted to turn at times to other things than these cosmic realms. A fat Englishman turned up the other day asking me to speak for the Columbia radio about the Spanish civil war: I refused that: but I am tempted to write something about The Elderly Mind of Early America, or about The Revolt of the Nations (against liberalism and parlaimentarism and English domination in general). The latter would be a part of Dominations & Powers, so that it would not be absolute truancy to devote a little time to it. But I have, as ^ ^ yet, not given any time in the morning to these side-shows: only scribbled a few pages in pencil at odd moments. The first two volumes of the Triton Edition ought to arrive soon.2 You will receive a copy. Yours affly G.S. 1
Subscription fee to the British Institute of Philosophy. Beauty and Interpretations.
2
To Andrew Joseph Onderdonk 28 October 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton) Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 28, 1936
Dear Onderdonk They have just sent me up your postcard, written in wonderful business Italian, and I interrupt the consideration of Eternal Truth to assure you that I am still alive and living here as usual. Have I neglected to answer some letter of yours? If so, it was because there was nothing
1933–1936
5:397
urgent to say. I have been in Paris and at Glion-sur-Montreux during the summer, not liking Paris at all in my present mood and at my advanced age: Glion was all right, but I expect to return next summer to Cortina. The devaluation of the lira has made Italy less expensive for me, and in any case I am not hard up now, especially as my novel has—at last!— brought a substantial return for my literary labours. It has also been a nuisance, in the number of useless questions and useless letters that it has occasioned: but the fuss is now subsiding and I am hoping to be allowed— by God and man—to finish my system of philosophy. It is probably not truer or more comprehensive than some other systems, but it combines radicalism with ideality, and that seems to be point of view and an equilibrium worth putting before the public. The Spanish troubles naturally disturb me a good deal; but I am encouraged and instructed by what seems to be the moral of them. I have become rather anti-English in my tendencies of late. My British and American affections have always been personal and social rather than political or theoretic: and now that I am at the last lap of life and not counting on the pleasures of friendship, the intellectual muddle, and theoretic meanness of the Anglo-Saxon mind repell me considerably. However, there must be a little of everything in the Lord’s vineyard, as they say in Spain. I wonder if a new Spain, with a good government, is really possible. Yours always G.S.
To George Sturgis 30 October 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton) Hotel Bristol, Rome Oct. 30, 1936
Dear George I have your letter of Oct. 16. Since I last wrote I have consulted Brown Shipley & Co in London about sending money to Mercedes, and they very obligingly have arranged with the London branch of the Banco Hispano-Americano to have the Vigo and Burgos branches of the same bank look Mercedes up, and (as I understand) pay her what I put at their disposal. I have asked them to let her have £100; but I haven’t yet heard whether the remittance has been made. The order, they said, would go by cable, as letters were apt to miscarry. If this plan works, it will be a great
5:398
The Letters of George Santayana
boon to Mercedes and will also relieve my mind. There would then not be any hurry about sending drafts from America, but you can forward the arrears when things are again normal. If the newspapers do not mislead us, we may expect a regular government re-established before very long in all Spain except Catalonia. That nut may take longer to crack, if it doesn’t prove a bombshell to set all Europe on fire. From the Sastres and from Manuela’s doctor I have not had any news. As to my will, I haven’t yet signed it, as the Murchies have been delayed for some reason not explained in their telegrams. If they don’t come, I shall have to think up some other way of finding the necessary witnesses. What you advise about my future $25,000 is not quite clear to me. This money is sent expressly to cover the provisions of the proposed will. I understand that, for that purpose, it ought to remain in my name and not in trust. Please let me know clearly whether I ought to endorse the cheque for $25,000 say to the “Second National Bank of Boston”; if I endorse it to you, could you then deposit it there or elsewhere in my name? I suppose if all the money were at first put in one bank, it would still be easy to buy bonds or make other deposits with a part of it, simply by drawing cheques. Wouldn’t this be the simplest arrangement? If there are difficulties which I don’t understand, you might ask Scribner to divide the cheques further, so as to enable me to endorse them to separate banks, as you might advise. Of course, I should be only too glad to have you act as trustee for the whole and save me all further trouble: only would there then be any funds for my new will to dispose of? You might carry out the provisions of it out of mere respect for my wishes, without legal obligation: but in that case why trouble about a will at all? Yours affly G.S.
To George Sturgis 1 November 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 1, 1936 Dear George Two more points: st – 1 I have received this morning a letter from Mercedes, from Bayona, dated Oct. 19. She had received one of my letters, with a cheque (only for
1933–1936
5:399
£7, unluckily) for which they gave her only 350 pesetas, there being apparently a discount for war-taxes. But I am in hopes that by this time she will have received my later cheque for £20, and the remittance of £100 through B. S. & Co so that she will be out of trouble. th She expected to be in Burgos on Oct. 28– nd 2– The mystery about the reported sales of my novel is not absolutely clear to my own mind, but turns on the copies taken by the Book-of-theMonth Club, which apparently is a vast money-making enterprise and not an innocent club. I had been told that they would absorb from 35,000 to 40,000 copies, for which they paid $10,000, to be divided between Scribner’s and me: this must be over and above paying for the actual cost of the books, since the $10,000 are clear profit, and I long ago received my $5,000. But now, without explanation, Scribner tells me that the Book-ofthe-Month Club took 60,000 copies, which they had a right to, without further payment to Scribner or me: and that number, added to those on which the royalty is about to be paid, make the 149,500 copies announced as sold. But isn’t it rather a singular compliment paid to me by the Bookof-the-Month Club, to give me $5,000 for 60,000 copies, when (if sold in the regular way) they would have yielded me royalties of about $25,000? And do you suppose Scribner has made only $5,000 profit out of those 60,000 copies sold? Mr. Wheelock has been very civil and obliging in regard to the novel and also this new swagger edition of my Opera Omnia; I don’t mean to utter any complaints; yet Scribner’s for many years has/ve been rather grasping and a little obscure in their proceedings, as they are in this case; and I can’t help being sorry for other authors in my position who may depend on their earnings for bread and butter. I don’t mind being managed, if I am fed: but not everybody can afford to be so philosophical Yours affy G.S. [across ] P.S. The Murchie’s aren’t coming. Don’t be impatient about the will. Some other witnesses may soon turn up.
5:400
The Letters of George Santayana
To Victor Francis Calverton 2 November 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: New York)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Nov. 2, 1936 Dear Mr. Calverton Your mysterious book is being laid aside until some future moment when I may be less occupied and preoccupied, but I have dipped into it, and in thanking you for sending it a/ I can already say that it has started a train of thought in my mind which might lead to radical conclusions.1 Suppose that by “hypnotism” we understand those biological tides which produce mass-conversions, religious epidemics, and climaxes or collapses in civilization, such as the “intellectual barbarism” that made Germany uninhabitable for your friend in the book—There is a nation hypnotized for good or ill, at least temporarily: but who did the hypnotizing, and what determined the kind of hypnotic suggestion to be induced? Hardly Hitler; he is too slight a personage; hardly even Nietzsche or Treitschky or Houston Stewart Chamberlain.2 But suppose it was they, or one of them: who shall un-hypnotize the hypnotizer? Who shall hit upon the blessed prescription that might liberate, instead of constraining, the “man inside”? Does your book contain a fresh discovery of human nature, so that not only the machinery for imposing a regimen, but the character of the regimen to be imposed, could recommend itself to mankind in the long run? I happen to be reading Lao Tse at odd moments.3 I wonder if we have any better solution to propose than he proposed long ago. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Possibly The Man Inside: Being the Record of the Strange Adventures of Allen Steele among the Xulus (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936). 2 Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) was a German Nazi and Führer of the Third Reich (1933–45) whose talents as orator and political tactician were the foundation of his demagogic power. Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–96), a German historian, was a strong partisan of German unification under Prussia and an ardent nationalist. He is known for his German History in the Nineteenth Century (1879–94). Houston Stewart Chamberlain (1855–1927), a British-born political philosopher, became a German citizen in 1916. His Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, a historical defense of the superiority of the Germanic race, contains anti-Semitic theories that later were developed by the Nazis.
1933–1936
5:401
3 Lao Tzu (b. c. 604 B.C.), a Chinese philosopher, is the legendary founder of Taoism. Lao Tzu is also the name of the basic text of the Taoist religion; it is commonly known as the Tao te ching.
To Robert Shaw Barlow 3 November 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 3, 1936 Dear Bob I am glad to know that you are well again and going your usual rounds. As to my letter about Faulkner’s Sanctuary, it is as well you didn’t send it to any paper. I think the philosophical part at the end might be worth printing, but perhaps would bear a little amplifying and illustrating, which would turn it into a technical argument not interesting to the general public. The first part is more lively but not always quite fair to Faulkner; his poetic [illegible ]side is not unintentional, and what I say about “droppings” would be more applicable to other people—e.g. Ezra Pound—than to him. On the whole, I am glad the matter should be dropped in its turn. Yes, of course I am concerned about the war in Spain, and some of my connections there may be actually fighting—of course on the nationalist side. I have no inside knowledge of the affair: but reflecting on it from a distance, I have a notion that it may be very important: a sort of turningpoint in history, which in my thoughts I call The Revolt of the Nations. Since the triumph of Christianity, and again after the Reformation and the English, American and French revolutions, our part of the world has been governed by ideas, by theories, by universal istic sects like the ^ ^ Church, the Free Masons, the Free Trade Industrial Liberals,1 and last of all the Bolshies. Such influences a re non-natural, non-biological; ^ ^ whereas the agricultural, military, and artistic life of nations is spontaneous, with ambitions that impose morality, but are not imposed by morality of any sort. Now isn’t that perhaps what the world is returning to after two thousand years of hypnotization by medicine-men and prophets? Spain has always been the most unfortunate of countries, and is now having a hard struggle to throw the Bolshies off, that had got hold of her always execrable government. But my friends write that the young people are unrecognizable in their energy and discipline, and that [across ] ^ ^
5:402
The Letters of George Santayana
we shall soon see a new Spain, as vigorous as in the Middle Ages. And of course Spain would not be alone in this transformation. Your ever G.S. 1 Freemasonry is the teaching and practices of the fraternal order of Free and Accepted Masons, an independent society with members in many parts of the world. Custom, ritual, and ceremony are part of each order’s secret meetings. Masonic principles have traditionally been democratic and liberal, but members are expected to believe in a Supreme Being and adhere to the writings of a “holy book.” The Liberal Party was the dominant political party in Great Britain from the mid-1800s until after World War I. It was composed of industrial and business classes who believed in free trade and religious freedom.
To John Hall Wheelock 5 November 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 5, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock Your letter of Oct. 23, my photograph (of 1911) and the proofs of the Preface to Vol. VII and the Berkeley have reached me today. Thank you very much. The photograph is better I think, than the drawing, and even ^ this is not the drawing that I feared. It, the photo, will do nicely for vol. ^ ^ ^ V. Reason in Science. There are some discrepancies in the indications previously given, due no doubt to various plans having been entertained at various moments, but that is now of no importance. The arrangement you now have adopted is, I agree, the best possible, and I am pleased that the apse of the Cathedral at Avila should have proved possible for vol. X. –[ I suspect, by the way, that a letter of yours must have miscarried, as I had no previous notice that the photographs of the apse had arrived, and have —d seemed suitable. If you said anything in that letter which required an answer, please excuse my apparent negligence. –] The first two volumes have not yet reached me, and I am most curious to see them. I will write again when they arrive. It is all right about the presentation copies to my friends, perhaps really better, as some of them might have been displeased not to receive copies numbered and signed, of more value in the market, if sad circumstances ever made them wish to sell the precious encumbrance. The proofs & MS. shall be returned in due time. Yours sincerely GSantayana
1933–1936
To Charles Augustus Strong 12 November 1936 • Rome, Italy
5:403
(MS: Rockefeller) Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 12, 1936
Dear Strong When the lira was devalued I was glad for your sake as well as for my own. Your household expenses will be more easily covered, even if you don’t live so much in Italy. As it were in acknowledgement of your book (which hasn’t yet arrived) you will receive soon the first two volumes of my Collected Works. There is little in the whole set—two volumes a month are promised—that you haven’t seen before, but I didn’t like not to send you the new toy, though it may be a sort of encumbrance. I mention it now so that, if you like, you may give orders to Dino not to forward the volumes. What are you going to do with 14 such tomes at Cannes? Cory’s last letter was running over with happiness at being able to philosophise with the London spirits—I was going to say “wits”, but that is hardly the word now. Nevertheless, he says he will come to Italy in March. He now can live just as well here as in England on his allowance, and I will pay his travelling expenses. You might get him to stop and confer with you, if you like, on his way here. Yours ever G. S.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 15 November 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 15, 1936 Dear Cory It is nice to know that you are keen about your philosophical wits, and that (nevertheless) you are coming to Rome in March. You must be your own master, but I think perhaps it would be more natural for you to come as before to the Bristol. You will be able, this year, to afford a room with a bath, and in good weather I think we could go as formerly to lunch at the Roma. I am very well, and should rather enjoy a change from un
5:404
The Letters of George Santayana
giorno risotto e un giorno pasta asciuta1 which I now take for lunch in my room, with stewed fruit to follow. All the same principal servants are here, except the old head-waiter. Your neapolitan friend has that dignity now. I should have written before, except that I was waiting to see the first two volumes of the Triton Edition. They haven’t yet reached me, but they are out in America, as Mrs. Toy has received her copy and writes that the binding is “discreet.” Better than “chaste”, but somewhat in the same direction. We shall see. Strong announces that he is coming to Rome in April. That will give you a chance to pay your respects to him here, if you don’t care to stop at Cannes or at Fiesole. The war in Spain is very much on my mind, but I would rather not talk about it. Otherwise, all is going well Yours affly G.S. Monday, 16th I reopen this letter on the receipt of yours from Bournemouth. Glad you are more enthusiastic than Mrs. Toy about the Triton. It hasn’t yet reached me. As to our plans when you come in March, we can arrange as we like later: but do you really mean the San Carlo in preference to the Roma? I got a cheque from Constable the other day for £88: a little less than 1000 copies of the novel had been sold between Jan. 1st and July 1st in Great Britain and a little over 1000 for export to Canada, etc. How is Michael? 1
One day risotto and one day pasta asciutta (Italian. See 25 December 1935 to Cory).
To Christopher George Janus 21 November 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Texas) Hotel Bristol, Rome (Piazza Barberini) Nov. 21, 1936
My dear Mr. Janus,1 I shall be very glad to see you and your friend when you come to Rome. You will find me here any day in the late afternoon, between 5.30
1933–1936
5:405
and 7, when no sightseeing is possible in December; but please send me word (not by telephone) in the morning, so that I may be expecting you. It is curious, and yet intelligible, that I should be so much better known in America than in England; but I have never expected to be much regarded by the other professional philosophers anywhere, and am amply rewarded by finding an occasional kindred spirit in the younger generation. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Christopher George Janus (b. 1911), son of Greek immigrants, educated at Harvard and Oxford, became an author and publisher. His works include The Search for Peking Man (Macmillan, 1975) and Miss 4th of July, Goodbye (1985). Janus’s memoirs, Angel on My Shoulder: Remembrances at Eighty (1993), contains the chapter “An Interlude with Santayana” (36–50).
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 25 November 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Nov. 25, 1936 Dear Cory, The Triton arrived two or three days ago. I agree with what you say about it, and in many ways feel relieved and content. They have avoided all splurge and vulgarity. The fancy name of Triton Edition is itself inconspicuous, and the cameo of the Triton small and distinguished. The title page and Anderson’s drawing opposite I like extremely: they have managed the thing to perfection. Then I found that the first volume, though rather heavy to hold (I can’t read a book layed flat on a table) tempts the eye, and keeps one reading. That must mean the functional perfection of paper, type, and arrangement of the page. But here I came upon something that perhaps points to another trait of the artist-publisher. My marginal headings are printed in large type across the page at the top of ^ ^ each paragraph. This suggests something which my writing is not. The paragraphs are only divisions in one discourse: they are not answers to stated questions or separate compositions. Probably this new arrangement will help the reader in that he will be satisfied to begin anywhere and read a paragraph: and that I believe is the way in which my style, if not my doctrines, may be best approached. But on the whole the change is a perversion, and marginal notes are an old device which has a special
5:406
The Letters of George Santayana
relish of its own. And now another symptomatic thing. The binding, for a 10 dollar volume, is most modest. Except for the gilded Triton, it might be taken for a temporary cover to a sewn volume, as yet unbound. The label is very nice—parchment, I suppose—but it seems to imitate paper. And the very dark blue sides and the very soft grey back—is that a fashion or a caprice? I seem to smell a rat here: The terror of not being in perfect taste. Mincing, apologizing, consciousness that one might go wrong. Now an édition de luxe should be gayer and bolder than that. Never mind a questionable flourish here and there, but have verve have go, dare to be lavish. In that way, I like Pierre la Rose’s1 edition of Lucifer better than this one. He plunged. In the Renaissance books could be magnificent. This is only perfectly neat, come from the best tailor and the best barber, and most anxious to look like a gentleman. Don’t feel too athletic. Feel that this get-up [across ] isn’t swagger enough. But I repeat that I like it extremely in its way, and think they have made, in their own style, a perfect success of it. Yours affly G.S. 1
Pierre de Chaignon la Rose (1873–1941) was an instructor in the Harvard English department (1895–1902) and later became a literary critic and a decorative and heraldic designer. La Rose designed the deluxe edition of Lucifer published by Dunster House in 1924. See Persons, 407–8.
To John Hall Wheelock 25 November 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
Nov. 25, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock The first two volumes of the Triton Edition ROME arrived safely two or three days ago. I had already some notion of them, one friend having written that they were beautiful, another that they were discreet, and a third that he was overwhelmed by their external loveliness. I am hardly overwhelmed, but I feel that you have taken infinite pains, have shown exquisite taste, and have produced a monument which if not aere perennius1 certainly raises me to a higher level as a sort of standard author. All the details please me, with a pleasure that grows on acquaintance; and the pages tempt the eye to read; I have found myself doing so more than in one place where the text in itself was of no particular interest: a circumstance which tends to show that you
HOTEL BRISTOL
1933–1936
5:407
have expertly combined paper, type, and arrangement of the page to perfection, so that reading becomes a physical pleasure. And this with the art that conceals art, because every feature seems natural and nothing is obtrusive. I noticed this with satisfaction (and relief) at once in respect to the Triton and the title of “Triton Edition”: these are inconspicuous, a bibliographical mark rather than of form of advertisement; and the cameo reproduced is small and charming. It is not, by the way, the particular Triton of the fountain in this square. I write on the hotel paper so that you may see what the Fontana del Tritone really is: but the design you have chosen is prettier and more suitable for a sort of seal for the Works. In reading, by chance, the Preface to Lucifer, I saw that an error occurring in the original had been reproduced: ‘independent on” instead of independent of. I had forgotten that trifling slip, caused by assimilation with the line immediately above. In general, I have taken for granted that the errors in all the books had been already noticed and corrected; and I think that is actually the case in those that have been reprinted. Of course, Lucifer was not in that case: and Egotism in German Philosophy is not; but in this there is, as far as I know, only one (quite excusable) error. But there are many in first editions: for instance of the Soliloquies in England; and I see that, with admirable fidelity, your printers have reproduced two that existed in the Dickens: p. 65, line 20 “infinitive” for infinite, and p. 68, line 6, “glad of breeze” for “glad of a breeze”. –[ pp. 262 & 265. Triton Edition. –] They are not bad errors; but to avoid others if possible, I send the enclosed note.2 The Anderson drawing is admirably reproduced: that frontispiece and the title-page please me enormously. Yours sincerely GSantayana Triton Edition of Santayana’s Works Errata in Original Editions Egotism in German Philosophy. p. 163, line 2, for “and” read or Soliloquies in England p. 157, 7th line from the bottom, for “he” read she p. 222, line 3 for “itself” read herself '' '' '' and line 7 '' p. 239, line 14, “because” should not be in italics. line 22, for “in her” read at
5:408
The Letters of George Santayana
Obiter Scripta Dewey’s Naturalistic Metaphysics, p. 216, line 3, for “depicting” read deputing. 1
More lasting than bronze (Latin, Horace, Odes III, 30, line 1). The errors reported by Santayana were corrected in the Triton Edition volumes for Soliloquies and Obiter but not for Egotism. 2
To Max Forrester Eastman 28 November 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Indiana)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Nov. 28, 1936 Dear Mr. Eastman Your letter reaches me when I had just written to your publishers saying I was ashamed to confess that I couldn’t understand a word of your book.1 If I had been writing to you I should have expressed the matter differently. I can understand your own words, and no doubt I should see a part, at least, of your reasons for making the distinctions you make in the kinds of the comic. My difficulty is with this comic universe itself. There is where everything eludes me in so far as it is supposed to be comic and in so far as the/is comic is supposed to be a part of the good. To me all ^ ^ these jokes seem rather ghastly. And the enjoyment of laughter, rather than a painful twist and a bit of heart-ache at having to laugh, perhaps, at such things at all, be — is ing your whole subject, I say I don’t understand a ^ ^ word of your book. That is, I am not able to share the happy experience ^ ^ that inspires you to write it. Never mind. You are probably in the same case (although you don’t say so) about my “Realm of Essence”. Why trouble about it? No one is going to hell, or even to the stake, for being a victim, in some direction, of “invincible ignorance”. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Enjoyment of Laughter (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936).
1933–1936
To Morton Dauwen Zabel 28 November 1936 • Rome, Italy
5:409
(MS: Newberry)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Nov. 28, 1936 Dear Mr. Zabel1 For my part, I shall be much honoured to have you reprint in your “Literary Opinion in America”, anything of mine that you choose; and as you say you will consult Charles Scribner’s Sons about the matter, who have the copyright if there is any, I see no further difficulty in your way. In my opinion Penitent Art is a better piece than An Aesthetic Soviet: but the choice is in your own hands2 Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Morton Dauwen Zabel (1901–64), a professor of English literature, wrote numerous texts on methods in fiction and poetry. From 1928 until 1937, Zabel served as associate editor and then editor-in-chief of Poetry: A Magazine of Verse. 2 “Penitent Art,” first published in The Dial in July 1922, was selected for Zabel’s book Literary Opinion in America: Essays Illustrating the Status, Methods, and Problems of Criticism in the United States in the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper, 1937): 122–29. “An Aesthetic Soviet” had appeared originally in The Dial in May 1927.
To Charles David Abbott 29 November 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Lockwood)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Nov. 29, 1936 Mr. C. D. Abbott1 Lockwood Memorial Library University of Buffalo Dear Mr Abbott The old manuscript book2 of which I send you a fragment has been going to pieces for years, and I should be glad if this earlier part of it, much of which has never been printed, should be of any interest in your collection. You promise not to sell this manuscript; and I hope you will
5:410
The Letters of George Santayana
also not let it be published, although I don’t mind if some student should wish to quote some part of it to illustrate any thesis he may be defending. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1 Charles David Abbott (1900–1961), a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University in 1927, became professor of English and director of libraries at the University of Buffalo (now SUNY Buffalo) from 1934 to 1960. Abbott founded and was curator of the University’s poetry collection, which includes poets’ worksheets, manuscripts, letters, and first editions. 2 Described by Santayana as “Earliest Verses of George Santayana transcribed by his own hand about the year 1890; no earlier manuscript remaining in his possession,” this notebook is dated Rome, 29 November 1936. Meticulously lettered, the notebook contains fourteen sonnets, four of which were unpublished during Santayana’s lifetime. Santayana’s stipulation that the manuscript not be published was set aside in 1969 by Dr. Oscar A. Silverman, Director Emeritus of the Lockwood Memorial Library, at the request of Cory and Holzberger, so the poems might be included in Complete Poems.
To John Hall Wheelock 29 November 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 29, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock The proofs for vol. VII, with the MS were sent long ago, registered. I hope they have arrived; but in case of accident, I send you my other copy of the galley-proof. There are not many changes to make, but some of them are distinctly necessary, as the text was a bit incoherent in places. Mr. Benamy Dobrée, in whose “From Anne to Victoria” my Bishop Berkeley was to appear, has as yet not breathed a word or sent me any proofs. I suppose vol. VII will appear about Feb. 1–st In any case we will go on regardless of Mr. Dobrée, who has to deal with many authors, and may be kept waiting indefinitely. He expected to publish his book in September. If he objects to our previous publication of Bishop Berkeley, he can leave — it him out. But it would be foolish of him, as the Triton Edition, in America, could not enter at all into competition with his much slighter and more popular English volume. I want him to publish my Berkeley, precisely to put it within range of the impecunious student. Yours sincerely GSantayana
1933–1936
To Benjamin P. Schwartz 30 November 1936 • Rome, Italy
5:411
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Nov. 30, 1936 Dear Mr. Schwartz Did I, by mistake, ask you for a copy of my article on “The indomitable individual”? You must have thought it strange that I should wish for one, when that article is luminously printed in Obiter Scripta. What I meant to ask for was a copy of another article, mentioned in your bibliography of my writings: “Natural Leadership.”1 It was very stupid of me to make that mistake; and I am ashamed doubly now, because I can’t explain without virtually suggesting that you take all this trouble over again to get me the copy I wanted. Please let me know if this old number of The New Republic is of pecuniary or other value, in which case I will send it back to you, as I am not a collector of old stuff, and for me it would be a mere encumbrance. A type-written or manuscript copy of “Natural Leadership” (which I think is a short piece) would be all that it would interest me to have for my “Dominations & Powers.” It may interest you as a bibliographer to know that a German translation of The Last Puritan has appeared, issued by C. H. Beck in Munich. Anti-German, anti-Goethe squibs omitted with my consent, and the translation made very nicely (as far as I can judge) “aus dem Amerikanischen”.2 Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Santayana did ask Schwartz to send him a copy of “Natural Leadership” not “The Indomitable Individual.” 2 From the American (German).
5:412
The Letters of George Santayana
To John Hall Wheelock 4 December 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Dec. 4, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock I shall be glad to see Prof. Edman’s Selections and especially his Introduction. One copy of the book is all I want, but I should be much obliged if you will have copies send/ t in my name to the addresses on the other half-sheet enclosed. They can be counted as three more of my copies. Yours sincerely GSantayana Prof. Irwin Edman’s Selections from Santayana. Please send a copy, with Mr. Santayana’s compliments, to the following addresses: Mrs. C. H. Toy 1 Waterhouse St., Cambridge, Mass. Daniel Cory, Esq., Towercliffe Hotel, Bournemouth, England. Prof. M. Losacco 18 Via Amelio Saffi, Florence, Italy.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 10 December 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Dec. 10, 1936 Dear Cory You will gather from the enclosed that this (probably one-faced) Janus is coming with a friend to Rome in January.1 He said in his first letter that they had a club at Wadham to study my philosophy. Now it occurs to me that they might get you to go and address them. It would be a way of get-
1933–1936
5:413
ting you to go to Oxford with an excuse and an introduction, in the first instance, to a set of undergraduates that might open other doors to you quite naturally. Would you be willing to do this? I forgot to send you a Christmas present this month, but I would gladly send it, doubled, in January or February, to cover extra expenses. Yours affly G.S. P.S. Don’t return Janus. 1
Santayana’s play on the name ‘Janus’ refers to the ancient Roman god of doorways, beginnings of undertakings of all sorts, and of the sun’s rising and setting. Janus was double faced and could look simultaneously to both east and west.
To George Sturgis 12 December 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton) Hotel Bristol, Rome Dec. 12, 1936
Dear George Here is the cheque for $25,000 from Scribner. I hope the form of endorsement is all right. Arrange the distribution of the investment as you think best, only I should like to be able to get at the capital, as well as the interest, if it should ever be wanted. At any moment my health may require me to have a companion or nurse or servant, or perhaps to go to Egypt for the winter (when I should take Cory with me) and such things would involve extraordinary expenses for which this money would come in pat. I have not yet signed the draft of my will, not having come across any one suitable witness, not to speak of three. But behind that accidental ^ ^ impediment, there is a deeper reason. The will was made out just as I suggested, and yet I am not altogether pleased with it. Sometimes it seems to me that I should do better to distribute those legacies now (or some of them: Onderdonk, for instance, might be left out) at once in the form of presents. That would avoid the possible difficulties in regard to the will, and enable the two old ladies to get the money before they died.1 What do you think of that idea? By the way, through B. S. & Co (who were very obliging) and the Bank of London & South America, which has branches at Vigo and (I understand) at Burgos, I have got £120 to Mercedes. She says they will pay her
5:414
The Letters of George Santayana
the money only in monthly installments, I think of 1000 pesetas: but in any case she is provided for for some months. Perhaps in time you will discover some way of sending her funds from America. She is at the Villa Florida, La Castellana, Burgos, Spain. From the Sastres and Manuela I have had no further news. The other day I wrote to Rafael, sending the usual Christmas present for the young people. Perhaps in time I may get a reply. As to Manuela, I fear the worst. Yours affly G.S. 1
Mercedes Ruiz de la Escalera and Nancy Saunders Toy.
To John Hall Wheelock 12 December 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton) Hotel Bristol Rome Dec. 12, 1936
Dear Mr. Wheelock I beg to acknowledge the receipt of the two cheques on account of the Last Puritan. I don’t think there will be any difficulty about sending an endorsed cheque out of the country. I constantly send endorsed cheques for small sums to my bankers in London. In this case, I am endorsing the larger cheque to my nephew, “George Sturgis, Trustee,” and I expect he will duly receive it. Vols. III & IV1 of the Triton Edition have not yet arrived, but doubtless will, in a day or two. The form of the books grows even more attractive on acquaintance Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Reason.
1933–1936
To George Sturgis 13 December 1936 • Rome, Italy
5:415
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Dec. 13, 1936 Dear George Your letters of Nov. 27 and December 1 reach me together. Also a letter from Mr. Wheelock giving much the same explanations as in his reply to Mr. Young. Those explanations are doubtless correct, and we have to accept them. That was my feeling about the matter before, and I am rather sorry that you made an inquiry which might imply a suspicion; but I confess that, not having a business mind, I still don’t quite understand the convolutions of the question. I wrote yesterday sending you the big cheque, but as the letter was registered, it may take a few days longer to arrive. As to the claims of Dr. Morejon in Madrid, and his announcement of the death of Manuela, I think it is better that I shouldn’t attempt to reply or to send him money from here. My previous letter and cheque for £20 has evidently not reached him; and now that Italy is in diplomatic and commercial relations with the Nationalist government, and not with the Valencia government, I am almost sure that a letter, much less a cheque, would not get to anyone still under the latter authority. I received both Dr. Morejon’s letters: but postponed replying to the later one, because it then seemed that Madrid might soon be occupied by the other party, and then there would have been a better chance of communicating from here. Now, however, the/at poor Manuela is dead and the situation, as it were, stabilized, I think there is no great hurry. Of course Dr. Morejon hasn’t paid anything “out of his own pocket”, but I daresay the surgeons’ large fees have remained unpaid, and possibly the hospital charges. I promised him to make good all the expenses incurred on behalf of Manuela; and if you can discover how much 3928 and 65/100 pesetas amount to now in Madrid in dollars, I should be glad if you would send him a cheque for them, or a /rfor a round sum a bit exceeding — it,this, to allow for fluctuations in the exchange. In Burgos they are giving Mercedes 50 pesetas for a pound Sterling. At that rate, $400 for Dr Eduardo Morejon would do the business: but rates may be different in Madrid. Charge them to my account, or charge to my account the part not covered by Manuela’s unpaid allowance. If this is not practicable, let
5:416
The Letters of George Santayana
me know and I will attempt to reach [across ] Madrid through London; although I don’t like to trouble B. S. & Co again. Yours affly G.S.
To Laetitia Bolton 14 December 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Dec. 14, 1936 Dear Miss Bolton1 “The Late George Apley”2 at once excited my interest, as certain parts, beginning with the sub-title, suggested that it might be a parallel or correction of to my “Last Puritan”. At first the hypocritical style puzzled —ve — me a little: Was the real author laughing at the fictitious author—a prim biographer discreetly leaving out everything interesting—or was he that prim biographer himself? I see now, on finishing the book, that the intention is tenderly satirical. “Life consists of learning how to be unhappy without worrying too much about it”. “I don’t believe he ever liked half of what he did, but simply everlastingly carried on, like the British Army.” Everything people like seems to be a substitute for what they really would have liked; and they talk, or rather write (since the book is composed chiefly of letters) as if they were speaking or writing an acquired foreign language. In comparing this picture with my memory of Boston society, it seems to me not so much exaggerated as too external, too verbal. Nice Boston people often talked like this, but they had more sense and more heart: they knew and understood everything, while keeping themselves personally under conventional restraints. Mr. Marquand’s hero seems to me not so much Bostonian as provincial. However, the book is a document, and I am much obliged to you for having sent it to me. Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Laetitia Bolton was an employee of Little, Brown and Company, publishers. The Late George Apley: A Novel in the form of a Memoir by J. P. Marquand was published in 1937 (Boston: Little, Brown & Co.). It won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1938 and was dramatized in 1946. J[ohn] P[hillips] Marquand (1893–1960) first wrote popular romances and dectective stories. His later novels satirize the upper class of Boston and New England and the culture in which he was raised. 2
1933–1936
To Bonamy Dobrée 14 December 1936 • Rome, Italy
5:417
(MS: Leeds)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Dec. 14, 1936 Dear Sir, It seems that my essay on Bishop Berkeley is to appear in vol. VII of my Works in January or February, in New York. As it was agreed that it should appear first in From Anne to Victoria, I feel that I owe you an apology for letting it be published first elsewhere: but the momentum of that American publication can’t be arrested now, and as you expected to issue your book in September, and as the price and character of the American edition, limited to 900 copies, excludes all rivalry as to sales, I think perhaps you and your publishers will forgive me. I am not surprised at the delay in getting a book by many authors ready for the press: but I hope the project is not abandoned Yours very truly GSantayana P.S. Of course, if the previous publication of my paper is a serious objection, you are at liberty not to include it in your book.
To John Hall Wheelock 15 December 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
C
/o Brown Shipley & Co 123, Pall Mall, London, S.W.1 Rome, Dec. 15, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock, Proofs of the preface to The Last Puritan, for the Triton Edition, are being sent back under separate cover, with slight corrections. Evidently the proof-reading has been already carefully attended to. Mr. Young’s inquiries as to the royalty account for The Last Puritan were made without my knowledge. In answer to questions of my nephew George Sturgis, I had tried to explain to him, as far as I understood the matter, that the Book-of-the-Month Club had taken 60,000 copies instead of the smaller number expected, and that the total remaining for direct
5:418
The Letters of George Santayana
royalties was reduced in consequence. But I didn’t pretend to follow the intricacies of the transaction, and have no desire to do so. George Sturgis now says that he finds your explanation satisfactory, so that the affair is terminated; but I am sorry that it should have been made a subject for needless discussion.1 Your note of Dec. 1–st reaches me while in the act of writing this letter. I quite understand that arranging the Triton Edition, with so many disparate parts, must have been a troublesome task. I am not sensitive about small omissions, such as the sub-title or the Greek motto to the Life of Reason.2 The origin of such details is often an accident, and sometimes, as in rhyming, an accidental compulsion may yield a happier result. I think, for instance, that transforming my marginal summaries, as you have done, into titles for the paragraphs may be a positive improvement, giving these summaries more importance; and they have cost me a good deal of thought. Little, Brown & Co have sent me a copy of The Late George Apley by John P. Marquand. The book seems a sort of parallel to The Last Puritan. Is it so intentionally or by accident, I wonder. It reflects well the artificial way in which some people spoke; a sort of careful school-master’s language and clergyman’s sentiments; but it seems to me more provincial in spirit—I mean, the hero’s mind—than my old Boston friends were, who knew and understood everything (like my Peter Alden) while maintaining a great restraint in their actions. Is the book liked? Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
See 1 November 1936. h( ga\r nou= e)ne/rgeia zwh/. (The act proper to mind is life.)
2
To Charles Augustus Strong 16 December 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Dec. 16, 1936 rd birthday) (my 73– Dear Strong Your Creed for Sceptics arrived some time ago, and I should have thanked you for it at once, except that I thought you would prefer that I
1933–1936
5:419
should read it first and give you something of my impressions. But many days have passed and I have read only the first essay, finding that it requires close attention, and I don’t want to put off writing until I have read the whole. The aspect of the book, the tone, and the style of this first paper seem to me admirable: you have become mellower, and at the same time more distinct and clearly doctrinal, so that the reader is interested in finding out what this dogmatic but amiable old gentleman has to say about the nature of things. And just as — in I remember in your French essay (for as I say, I haven’t yet re-read it here) the effect was that of a nice speculation, so hea/ re the theory has an interest as a theory, apart from any challenge it may make as the only right and true theory. In other words, it seems to me that your exposition has gained a good deal in literary value, whatever judgement people may pass on it as philosophy. Where you seem to have me in mind, about the nature of the “sensedatum”, you don’t maintain anything that I should care to contradict; but I am not sure about the fact you rely on, that intuition arises by physiological reaction: that is, if you mean muscular reaction towards an external object. Head-ache, stomach-ache, and my favourite nausea hardly seem to require that. I should agree, however, to what you say on p. 9. about the “office” of the sense-datum; because in my view the intuition and the given essence rest on a physiological function that has an “office”, in bodily life if not in external perception: when you invoke the “office” you are already in the cellarage, and beneath the horizon of pure intuition.1 But I will write again when I have read the elucidations and the rest of the book. Yours ever G.S. 1
“The cellarage is in the top story!” is written here in a hand other than that of Santayana.
5:420
The Letters of George Santayana
To Cyril Coniston Clemens 18 December 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Duke)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Dec. 18, 1936 Dear Clemens, Thank you and your committee for your congratulations for still being in this world. It is a dubious privilege in itself, especially at the age of 73, but I am in good health and spirits, and willing to exist a little longer, Deo volente. As to my medal, and the inscription you propose, I suppose, being from the Mark Twain Society, it is meant to humorous. But most people would laugh at us, not with us; and please choose something else, or (better) nothing at all. I have an imitation-gold medal from the Royal Society of Literature which says simply Honoris Causa1 and leaves the rest to the imagination. That at least is safe. I shall be glad to receive your Quarterley.2 I had never heard of A. E. Housman or of the Shropshire Lad when Gaillard Lapsley3 (a Harvard man, Class of 1893, who has been for many years of Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge) mentioned him as well known, and got him to sit next to me one day at dinner in Hall. I dined with him again years later at Lapsley’s; but he was amiably silent. However, I had meantime read the Shropshire Lad, and Last Poems, and now More Poems, always with tears. There is not much else than tears in them, but they are perfect — in of their kind. I will gladly send you a copy of Obiter Scripta, inscribed to your society, and I return your cheque. I have already sent for a copy from London, the English edition being more imposing and likely to get to you sooner. If there is duty to pay, you may devote the cheque to that patriotic purpose Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
For the purpose of honor (Latin). The Mark Twain Quarterly (St. Louis, Mo.: The International Mark Twain Society, 1936–53). 3 A[lfred] E[dward] Housman (1859–1936) was an English classicist, textual scholar, and poet. In 1911 he became Kennedy Professor of Latin at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College. His first book of poems, A Shropshire Lad (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1896), was published at his own expense, though later it became a best seller. Other works include Last Poems (1922) and More 2
1933–1936
5:421
Poems (1936). He was notorious for taciturn and aloof behavior toward those whom he did not know well. Gaillard Thomas Lapsley (1871–1949) received his Ph.D. in 1897. He taught at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1904 to 1929. Afterwards, he was a University of Cambridge reader in constitutional history; he returned to the United States in 1939.
To Charles Augustus Strong 23 December 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Rockefeller)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Dec. 23, 1936 Dear Strong George de Cuevas was here this afternoon and gave me not very good news of Margaret and the children. They are all here, at the Grand Hotel, on account of Margaret’s doctor having moved to Rome. It seems that both the children are suffering from trouble in some gland or other—I won’t attempt to repeat George’s Spanish description—which is curable but requires care and constant treatment. And Margaret, according to George, is nervous, depressed, and very changeable in her caprices. Altogether, it is very sad. It seems that they are to be in Rome for some time. I have now finished your book, except the French article which I remember pretty well and won’t re-read for the present. The total impression left on me is that you are to be congratulated on having turned out a compact volume, so well expressed, and that evidently satisfies you by the finality of its doctrine, and the conviction that the world, sooner or later, will have to accept it. The book, however, is not easy reading, or very appealing to the imagination. You ought not to be disappointed if it is not widely read at first. You may exercise your influence perhaps indirectly through a few students who will adopt or adapt your doctrines and diffuse them in more popular forms. You know that I am not inclined to discuss these matters any more. It would be useless, for both of us, and merely irritating. I agree with you in the view that there is a biological level beneath the psychological, and that all the dirty work is done below stairs, as it should be in any well-ordered household. But I see only confusion in using psychological terms for biological processes: except indeed when we do so, like Freud, with avowed figurative and mythological licence, because the biological detail is little understood, and it is only the large moral effects that interest us. My own
5:422
The Letters of George Santayana
thoughts, at present, are turned so decidedly in another direction that detailed psychological theory cannot hold my attention. Yours ever G.S.
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 26 December 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Dec. 26, 1936 Dear Cory Here is your New Year’s present for the striped clothes, which I hope will be appropriately elderly now that you have entered the middle ages, or il mezzo del cammin di nostra vita.1 I will send you another £10 for your Oxford trip, if it is decided upon. Janus and his friend will be here th about Jan. 12– and after I have seen the cut of their jib, if this is all right, I will suggest that they invite you to address their club. February, just before you come to Rome and have already pulled up your stakes at Bournemouth, I should think would be a good time. You don’t go to Oxford for the interest of the place—you have so little for such things—but for philosophy pure and simple. But I daresay they would like to have you in October (or November, as term settles down rather late) if you preferred, if Janus & Co are still up, and if the club continues to exist. It would be safer, I think, to go at once. I haven’t yet received vols. III & IV of the Triton Edition. The parcel took a long time to arrive in the case of the first volumes also. But I have the German translation of The Last Puritan (in one volume) and also a Swedish translation: three copies of vol. II, two in paper, one in a hideous cloth binding, but no copies of vol. I. I suppose the first parcel was lost. It doesn’t matter, as neither I nor anybody I know can read the language. I have gone over one or two familiar passages, to see what I could make out. It is fundamentally like German, and if one had mastered articles and pronouns and the verbs to have and to be, it might be easy to make the stuff out. Curious, isn’t it, that the Nordics should appreciate this book. I think they take it as a document for studying American life. The German translation announces that it is made (by two ladies) aus dem Amerikanischen. Ah! My beautiful Received Standard English wasted! Yours affly GS 1 The midway point in the road of our life (Italian). Cory turned thirty-two on 27 September 1936.
1933–1936
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 27 December 1936 • Rome, Italy
5:423
(MS: Columbia)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Dec. 27, 1936 Dear Cory Yesterday morning I had a novelty in my room at breakfast—a blazing wood-fire in the chimney! It was very pleasant for a while, but a woodfire needs to be tended rather often and is distracting when one wishes to work. However, I am glad to have made the experiment, and now know that it is feasible to have a pleasant glow in the hearth when one wants it. “Spirit” is going on slowly but solidly: it isn’t all spiritual stuff, but there are side glances at technical problems, e.g. monadology and panpsychism, à propos of the “distribution of Spirit”, which is Chapter II.1 It is pleasant to know that you are happy about your essays or articles, and are laying plans for the future. You certainly ought to go to London occasionally, and keep up your literary acquaintances. Yours affly G.S. 1 In Spirit chapter II is “On Cosmic Animism” and chapter III is “The Natural Distribution of Spirit.”
To Rosamond and George Sturgis 28 December 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Houghton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome Dec. 28, 1936 Dear Rosamond and George Very beautiful double carnations, in profusion, came from you by radio, or however they come. It was very kind of you to send them besides the card signed by the boys as well. I am being treated very kindly by the world in my old age. Even an unknown friend I have in the Michigan State prison, called Wayne Joseph Husted,1 No 35571, sent me a Christmas card. Years ago he honoured me with a psychological essay, really very good, on prison life, and since then we occasionally exchange civilities. I am now sending him The Last Puritan. I hope it won’t be stopped by the authorities as dangerous to convict morals.
5:424
The Letters of George Santayana
The reception of this book has been curious. I don’t think many people really like it, yet it has had, as you know, a vast success. The other day I received a Swedish translation. The German version—with the nasty things I say about Germans and Goethe left out by agreement—announces that it is translated by two ladies, aus dem Amerikanischen. Fancy that, when I am so proud of my Received Standard English. But I gathered from what I could make out of the Swedish wrapper, and from other hints, that the interest taken in the/ is novel— by the Nordics is entirely ^ ^ scientific. Style, humour, etc, are beneath their notice: but they say the book is an important document on American life; and as America—I mean the U.S.—is important for them commercially and racially, they wish it to be studied in their country. Perhaps it will be quoted, as a warning, by the Nazi professors of sociology. This, like my convict friend, falls to me by divine grace, with no effort or merit on my part. We have uses we never intended. I have had a touch of catarrh, very slight, as the injections my Italian doctor2 gives me seem to keep off the worst; I am now quite well and working with gusto, as I almost see my plans as to books completely carried out.—Here is an egotistical letter, all about trifles interesting only to [across] myself: but the great questions like the war in Spain, and the Simpson affair,3 are too sad to write about. Yours affty GSantayana 1
Unidentified. Luigi Sabbatucci. See 25 November 1935. 3 Wallis Warfield Simpson (1896–1986), of the United States, divorced her second husband to marry Edward VIII (1894–1972). Edward, the eldest son of King George V, was the only British monarch to abdicate the throne voluntarily and married Simpson in 1937. They lived in exile as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, mainly in Paris. Simpson was the first woman chosen as Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” (1936). 2
To John Hall Wheelock 28 December 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Princeton)
Hotel Bristol, Rome, Dec. 28, 1936 Dear Mr. Wheelock Last night I received vols. III & IV of the Triton Edition. The two frontispieces please me very much. The portrait1 is made far more artistic and romantic than the old photograph, and doesn’t look very much as I really
1933–1936
5:425
did. But there is no harm in being flattered for posterity—and the present generation is practically posterity from the point of view of 1886. The darkening has turned me into a picture-book Spaniard. Tant mieux.2 The Harvard Yard is also darkened and made to seem far more bosky and umbrageous than it was. The bricks were in fact rather mean and ugly and the trees thin. But it might have been like this. And there is the college pump at which I daily drew my water,/ (and my coal from the cellar) and the two windows of 19 Hollis perfectly plain—the ground-floor corner room to the left—where I spent my four undergraduate years. Number 7, Stoughton, where I was proctor in the ’90’s, and which was my favourite room in many ways, would also be visible, being the corner up one flight, if the shadows of these elms hadn’t grown so thick in the picture. Altogether, to me at least, it is all very evocative, and suggests much human and personal experience behind the correct views of the text: primmer, that text, than I now feel myself to be, and much primmer than I was then. I didn’t want to be a hypocrite; but how can a professional man decline to be professional? I have had a chance to read Edman’s Introduction, although my own copy hasn’t yet arrived. It is very sympathetic, cordial, and intelligent. I have written to him about it, saying that I only wish he had been bolder in his criticisms. It is largely an echo of my own words; but not refocussed to suit the necessities of a summary. My views then seem more arbitrary, less growing out of the earth, than in fact they are. However, Edman has been a most faithful interpreter and tender critic, and I ought not to complain. I have received a Swedish copy of The Last Puritan, besides the German translation. The latter asserts that it is made (by two ladies) aus dem Amerikanischen. My Received-Standard English wasted! Yours sincerely GSantayana 1
Santayana’s 1886 Harvard class photo is the frontispiece to volume III. So much the better (French).
2
5:426
The Letters of George Santayana
To Daniel MacGhie Cory 29 December 1936 • Rome, Italy
(MS postcard: Columbia)
Rome, Dec. 29, 1936 Have been reading (in an autograph-snatcher’scopy) Edman’s Introduction to his Selections. I am having it sent to you. It is anodyne.—And can you tell me whether Cornelia Geer Le Boutillier, who has sent me an article about Essence, etc, from Philosophy, is Miss or Mrs., and what the address of Philosophy is?1 She isn’t so anodyne, because although fundamentally she understands (begins admirably about Descartes!) she gives the impression that I am more intellectually a “softy” than I really am. However, she ought to be thanked, and I have lost her previous letter.—Vols III & IV of the Triton arrived last [across] night. I like the two frontispieces very much. G.S. 1
Cornelia Geer Le Boutillier (1894–1973), American philosopher, teacher, and author, received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1936. Her article “Spiritual Life: Santayana’s Approach to Essence” appeared in Philosophy 11 (October 1936) and was reprinted by Unwin Brothers, Limited (London, 1936).
EDITORIAL APPENDIX
Textual Commentary I. Summary Statement of Textual Principles and Procedures for The Works of George Santayana A. The Works of George Santayana and Editorial Scholarship The volumes of The Works of George Santayana are unmodernized, critical editions of George Santayana’s writings. This scholarly edition is “unmodernized” because it retains original and idiosyncratic punctuation, spelling, capitalization, and word division in order to reflect the full intent of the author as well as the initial texture of the work; it is “critical” because it allows the exercise of editorial judgment in making corrections, changes, and choices among authoritative readings. The editors’ goals are to produce texts that accurately represent Santayana’s final intentions regarding his works and to record all evidence on which editorial decisions have been based. Except for the Letters and Marginalia volumes, The Works of George Santayana pertain typically to materials composed by Santayana that he intended for publication and dissemination in a printed form. For these writings there may exist a holograph manuscript, a typescript, printers’ proofs, two or more editions, and multiple impressions of editions. In such cases the term “critical edition” indicates the task of comparing these various forms of the text in order to ascertain and perpetuate the author’s “final intentions” regarding his work. When the genealogy of the text has been established and the relationships of all pertinent documents determined, the editors choose the document that will serve as copy-text for the critical edition. In the absence of the holograph manuscript, this is normally the document which is closest to the author’s hand. Two independent sight or machine collations are performed against the copy-text for each form of the text produced by Santayana or published during his life-time.
B. Transcribing, Editing, and Typesetting The Works of George Santayana Transcribing, editing, and typesetting the copy-text(s) to reproduce a critical text as accurately as possible is the primary goal of the Santayana Edition. This reproduction of The Works of George Santayana is, therefore, done electronically and, beginning with Volume Five, the books are produced with QuarkXPress, a commercial electronic typesetting program. First the text is
430
Editorial Appendix
carefully transcribed (a literal transcription indicating internal variants is produced if the copy-text is the holograph manuscript or a typescript corrected by Santayana). As part of the initial transcription the editors identify the various text elements (chapter headings, subheadings, marginal headings, standard paragraphs, extracts, poetry lines, footnotes, and the like), each of which is rendered visually distinctive with the help of QuarkXPress, making systematic use of the program’s template features. Each transcription then receives at least two independent sight collations against the copy-text to ensure its accuracy. Various software programs aid the editors in locating, counting, and compiling material needed in making editorial decisions. Together with a “Word Book” indicating Santayana’s usage and spelling of problematic words, they are used to identify patterns of punctuation and spelling and all line-end hyphens in the copy-text. In addition to the copy-text, files consisting of the front matter, textual notes, various appendixes, references, and index are compiled and organized using a variety of software programs. These files are placed into the QuarkXPress program and the pages produced are proofed twice for accuracy and checked against the text as necessary. Use of the QuarkXPress desktop publishing program enables the editors to send proofed pages to MIT Press for printing. Before the book is printed, a check of the blueprints (contact prints of the negatives) is made. At this stage, alterations to the text can quickly be identified by focusing principally on a comparison of line and page breaks. Differences in lineation or pagination signal changes within the lines that must then be scrutinized carefully. The desktop typesetting employed in The Works of George Santayana greatly facilitates the editing and publication processes because it maintains the accuracy of the textual record, keeping it free from the errors or alterations almost invariably arising from retyping a document. In having direct control over the printing process, then, the editors also safeguard the integrity of the critical edition text. The final critical edition of a text is, except for emendations dictated by editorial policy, identical to the thoroughly proofread transcription of the copy-text.
II. Publication History of the Letters Santayana probably never intended his correspondence to be published, and did not write letters as he wrote works for publication. The intent of this volume is to present the letters in a form that will give the reader an experience close to that of reading the original letter. Therefore, these published letters are, as much as possible, exact copies of the holograph original. That is, they are, in effect, semi-diplomatic transcriptions, reproducing all of the characteristics of the autograph letters, including misspellings, mispunctuation, grammatical errors, slips of the pen, and such alterations as cancellations and
Textual Commentary
431
insertions. The printed form of the letters adheres to the characteristics of the originals in all of these particulars. The exceptions to this practice of exact transcription and reproduction are lineation, pagination, and other physical features of his letters which it is clear Santayana did not intend to carry any meaning. The editors subscribe to the view of modern epistolary scholarship that “a scholarly edition should not contain a text which has editorially been corrected, made consistent, or otherwise smoothed out. Errors and inconsistencies are part of the total texture of the document and are part of the evidence which the document preserves relating to the writer’s habits, temperament, and mood.”1
A. Earliest Publications A few hundred of Santayana’s letters have appeared unsystematically, in whole or in part, in a number of periodicals and books. Recipients of the letters, editors of periodicals, and authors of books on Santayana recognized the quality and interest of the letters and were desirous of putting them before the public, but it was not until 1955 that a book-length collection of Santayana’s letters became available. The first volume of Santayana’s letters was collected and edited by Daniel Cory and published by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1955. The idea for a collection of Santayana’s letters began to take shape in the autumn of 1952 when, in a 21 October letter to Daniel Cory, Scribner’s editor John Hall Wheelock suggested the undertaking of such a project.2 Cory agreed to edit the collection and write an introduction for it, and he and Wheelock worked together at the task of gathering the letters. The Scribner’s edition of The Letters of George Santayana is a handsome and well-made volume and an excellent selection of Santayana’s letters. Cory and Wheelock made every effort to present the 296 letters to 86 recipients (constituting a wide variety of persons) as Santayana wrote them. A deliberate effort was made to preserve Santayana’s spellings (American in the earlier letters and British in the later ones) and punctuation. Except for a few mistranscriptions from the holographs, the text of the 1955 edition is accurate (for a more detailed description of the Scribner’s edition of The Letters of George Santayana, see Letters, Book One, [MIT], 424–25).
B. The Comprehensive Edition of Santayana’s Letters: Origins and Development The project for a comprehensive edition of Santayana’s letters was originated by Daniel Cory (for a more detailed version of this section, see Letters, Book One, 426–28). His association with Santayana began in 1927, when the philosopher engaged the young man to serve as a literary secretary or assis-
432
Editorial Appendix
tant, reading his manuscripts and advising him on technical and compositional elements. This relationship—with many separations and interruptions—lasted until Santayana’s death on 26 September 1952. Santayana bequeathed to Cory his remaining unpublished manuscripts—and the rights to his literary properties generally—and named him his literary executor. Cory placed Santayana’s manuscripts in four university libraries that were to become principal centers for Santayana manuscript materials: the Butler Library at Columbia University, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, the Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and the Alderman Library at the University of Virginia. He also began editing and publishing the essays, poems, and plays not published during Santayana’s lifetime. In July 1971 Cory began to make arrangements with an American university press for a new and enlarged edition of Santayana’s correspondence. He then had on hand about 700 letters not included in the Scribner’s volume, and a new two-volume edition was envisaged. At the same time William Holzberger was working on a critical edition of Santayana’s poetry (published as The Complete Poems of George Santayana by the Bucknell University Press in 1979), and, while doing his research, he located and collected copies of approximately four hundred unpublished Santayana letters in twenty-one libraries. In 1972 Cory entered into a collaboration with Holzberger to produce the new edition. After Cory’s sudden and unexpected death later that year Margot Cory succeeded her husband as literary executor and approved the idea of continuing work on the letters edition. Early in 1977 Holzberger joined the project initiated by members of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy to produce a critical edition of all of Santayana’s writings. Subsequently it was decided to incorporate the letters edition into the Critical Edition of The Works of George Santayana.
III. Textual Principles and Editorial Procedures for The Letters of George Santayana A. Collection of the Letters The goal of the editors has been to identify and collect all of George Santayana’s letters for publication in The Works of George Santayana. Although substantial numbers of his letters have been found, many more are missing, some known to be destroyed, and others unlocated (for a list of unlocated letters, see pages 557–60). The search for Santayana’s letters, begun by Daniel Cory in the early 1950s and ongoing by the present editors, has resulted in the location of more than
Textual Commentary
433
three thousand pieces of correspondence. These include letters, notes, postcards, and a few telegrams and cablegrams; the texts of all of these are contained in this edition. Daniel Cory’s method of locating and collecting the letters was to publish advertisements in leading journals and reviews, to visit libraries known to contain principal collections of Santayana manuscript materials, and to write to individuals who he believed might have corresponded with Santayana. Later, in the 1970s, William Holzberger consulted both the first and second editions of American Literary Manuscripts: A Checklist of Holdings in Academic, Historical, and Public Libraries, Museums, and Authors’ Homes in the United States 3 to generate a list of institutions reported as holding Santayana manuscripts. Letters of inquiry were sent to libraries at sixty-three institutions. In addition, fresh advertisements for Santayana letters were run in a number of leading literary publications, including The Times Literary Supplement (London), The New York Times Book Review, The New York Review of Books, and American Literature. Letters of inquiry were sent to more than fifty individuals believed to have received correspondence from Santayana. Also, scholars familiar with this project have kept an eye out for Santayana letters in the course of their research efforts, and this has resulted in the acquisition of several valuable pieces of correspondence that otherwise might not have been acquired. This continuous effort to locate Santayana letters in the libraries or files of institutions and in the possession of private individuals has resulted in the identification and acquisition of over two thousand more letters than the original thousand that Daniel Cory and John Hall Wheelock had accumulated at the time the selection was made for the 1955 Scribner’s edition. The title of the present edition, The Letters of George Santayana, is the same as that of Cory’s selected edition. It is the best title for such a collection because it suggests comprehensiveness without implying absolute completeness. Although every effort has been made to locate and acquire all of Santayana’s letters, that remains a goal impossible to achieve. We know that Santayana himself destroyed the letters he had written to his mother, and he made references to other letters that remain unlocated. However, this comprehensive edition is as complete as many years of work can make it, and it certainly represents the principal corpus of Santayana’s correspondence.
B. Arrangement of the Letters The letters are arranged chronologically, from earliest (to Susan and Josephine in 1868) to latest (to Daniel Cory, 3 August 1952), a period of about eighty-three years. This chronological progression, together with division of the letters into books of approximately equal length, constitutes the sole organizing principle for the edition. Except for the period covered in the first two books (1868–1920), Santayana’s history is not clearly marked either by a sequence of periodic res-
434
Editorial Appendix
idences or dominating events. Therefore, any division of Santayana’s life and letters into episodes seemed artificial and undesirable. Because of the gap between the earliest extant letter and the next earliest one (21 August 1882) and the fact that, as would be expected, fewer of the early letters have survived, the first book covers a much longer period than subsequent books. The organization of the letters in Volume V of The Works of George Santayana is as follows: Book One, [1868]–1909; Book Two, 1910–1920; Book Three, 1921–1927; Book Four, 1928–1932; Book Five, 1933–1936; Book Six, 1937–1940; Book Seven, 1941–1947; and Book Eight, 1948–1952.
C. Transcription of the Letters 1. Transcribing the Texts from Originals or Photocopies of the Original Holograph Letters In the case of correspondence the original handwritten document (holograph manuscript) is the only extant authorial form of the text (the boards of this book provide a typical example of Santayana’s letters). This holograph manuscript, therefore, constitutes the copy-text for the vast majority of the letters included in this edition. In those instances where no holograph is extant, the editors have had to choose a form of the letter which seems to be the closest and most likely to reproduce the missing original. For some letters this is a transcription typed by the recipient specifically for an earlier edition of the letters or for deposit with a library or another individual. For others it is a typed transcription prepared by Daniel or Margot Cory or William G. Holzberger for the edition of letters which Cory, and later Holzberger, anticipated publishing; these transcriptions were done against originals borrowed from the recipient or photocopies thereof. And for some letters the only extant form is a previously published version. Fortunately, most of these “published version” letters are included in the 1955 edition of Cory’s The Letters of George Santayana, where, for the most part, it was Cory’s intent to publish them without alteration. When using these alternative forms in lieu of originals, the editors still have been conservative in making emendations. Based on the editors’ careful comparisons between transcriptions of letters where the original or photocopy survived and those where the letter was lost, the attempts at making the transcriptions more standardized for an earlier publisher (i.e., underlining titles rather than leaving the quotation marks used by Santayana, deleting or standardizing the format of addresses, dates, or signatures) are considered to be earlier editorial alterations and thus not part of the original letter. Also those errors in transcription or typesetting which seem to be merely typographical in nature are not reproduced as part of the critical text. Since the editors’ aim is to provide the reader with a text that can be described as semi-diplomatic, their task lies in correctly reading and tran-
Textual Commentary
435
scribing this copy-text first and then in assembling and reproducing the letters critically in printed form. Wherever possible, exact transcriptions were made from original holograph manuscripts or photocopies of them. All transcriptions were made by members of the editorial staff of the critical edition. The essential principle guiding transcription was to record everything that Santayana wrote on the holograph. This meant that any revisions that Santayana made—cancellations and insertions—were noted. The 155 letters for which original holographs have not been located are noted as ‘(MS: Unknown)’ in the headnote.4 The textual notes contain more specific information about the actual source for the letter.
2. Plain-Text Transcription This edition of Santayana’s correspondence is a “plain-text” edition. As the editors of Mark Twain’s letters (1988–) explain, “plain text” differs in intent and in form from the two other principal types of transcription of texts: “clear text” and “genetic text.”5 Transcriptions in “clear text” are devoid of editorial symbols; information regarding authorial revisions is provided in footnotes or in appropriate sections of the editorial appendix. Transcriptions in “genetic text,” through the use of arbitrary symbols (such as angle brackets and arrows), attempt to report any and all revisions that the author made on the holograph. “Plain-text” transcription is like “clear text” in avoiding arbitrary mechanical symbols, but like “genetic text” in presenting the creative process at work within the original document. The concept of “plain text” is to represent authorial revisions by signs more natural and less arbitrary, thus making a clearer and more immediately intelligible text for the reader. The editors, by means of plain-text transcriptions, have attempted to represent the original holograph letters as nearly as an efficient printed format will allow. The goal has been to enable the reader to approximate the experience of reading the original holograph letters. To this end, the texts of the letters have not been altered (except in rare instances, where meaning would otherwise be obscured): misspelled words are left uncorrected; no changes are made in grammar; and punctuation is neither altered, added, nor deleted. The letters for which an alternative form of a letter is copy-text are carefully reproduced, though without any plain-text transcription, with appropriate emendation and regularization based on the editor’s familiarity with Santayana’s style of writing and composing letters. Whatever the copy-text for a specific letter, any changes or emendations of it are reported in the textual notes, and errors are listed and marked ‘[sic ] ’ to provide assurance that they represent accurate readings of the copy-text, not editorial inattention. Cancellations: single-character words, or single characters within words, cancelled on the holograph letter are indicated by slash marks. See 6 January
436
Editorial Appendix
1933 to Otto Kyllmann (‘devote/ing’), where Santayana wrote the ‘i’ over the ‘e’, or 15 August 1933 to Daniel MacGhie Cory (‘pag/ ce’), where ‘c’ was written over ‘g’. Cancellation of two or more characters as words, word fragments, or within words is indicated by a horizontal rule through the cancelled matter. Jan February’), where ‘Febr’ See examples at 12 February 1933 to Daniel Cory (‘— was written over ‘Jan’; at 21 July 1933 to Henry Ward Abbot (‘have —s’), where ‘s’ find reduce’), was written over ‘ve’; and at 26 January 1934 to Daniel Cory (‘— where ‘reduce’ was written over ‘find’. Insertions: single characters, word fragments, words, or phrases inserted on the letter are indicated by the use of inferior carets. See for example the letter of 26 April 1933 to Daniel Cory (‘disillusion ed critic’), or 10 May 1933 to ^ ^ Charles Augustus Strong (‘old worldly habits’), or 15 November 1933 to ^ ^ Sterling Power Lamprecht (‘given to you as in a dream and’). Both linear and ^ ^ marginal insertions are indicated in this way, with marginal insertions further described in a textual note. Insertions above cancellations: words written above cancellations are indicated by a combination of the horizontal rule and the inferior carets oof MS ’, 21 June 1935 to Charles Strong), and the revision is also (‘the — pr— ^ ^ further described in a textual note. Cancellations within insertions: are indicated by the combined use of slashvery— year ’ , 3 October es or horizontal rules and inferior carets (‘twelves/ —e— ^ ^ 1935 to George Sturgis). It should be remembered that although plain-text transcriptions, through the employment of type-identical signs, bear a greater resemblance to the original handwritten letters than do transcriptions using the traditional editorial symbols, they are not in fact type facsimiles of the holograph letters. Plain-text transcriptions do not reproduce the original lineation, pagination, or any nonverbal characteristics of the manuscript unless the author intended these features to bear meaning, as for instance in quoting poetry. (The purpose of plain text is not to reproduce the holograph letters pictorially, in the way of facsimiles.) The plain-text transcriptions of Santayana’s letters in this edition are intended to represent the original holograph letters in type in such a way that any revisions are immediately identifiable and the texts completely legible. Other signs used in this edition for transcribing Santayana’s correspondence include: —[ —] Broken brackets: indicate matter bracketed by Santayana on the holograph. [ ] Editorial brackets: supply text the editors think necessary for sense or describe textual conditions (the latter signaled by italic type). * or x Asterisks or superscript ‘x’: designate Santayana’s footnotes. 1 Superscript numerals: indicate editorial footnotes.
Textual Commentary
437
D. Emending and Regularizing the Letters Although the editors’ aim is to publish the original document unchanged, some emendations are made in the copy-text. With certain exceptions corrections and alterations of words or spelling or punctuation are recorded in the textual notes. Santayana’s nonlinear placement of text along the margins of his manuscript pages has been standardized, with appropriate editorial explanation. See, for example, the letter of 10 July 1933 to William Lyon Phelps, ‘bless you! [across] Kindest regards—’, where the text beginning with ‘Kindest’ is written crosswise in the blank margin; that of 18 February 1935 to George Sturgis, ‘He said he [across page one] enjoyed his visit’, where Santayana returns to the first page of the letter and writes in the blank margin; and that of 1 February 1936 to John Hall Wheelock, ‘to return to [across text ] Harvard after 18 months’, where Santayana has actually written crosswise over words already on the page. Accidentally repeated words are removed from the text, and such emendation is further described in the textual note. Santayana very often did not close a paragraph with final punctuation, particularly at the end of a letter. This has not been altered, and since it is so common the editors have chosen not to note every instance in the textual notes. Santayana followed a common nineteenth-century convention of indenting the first paragraph of his letters more deeply than subsequent paragraphs. This has not been replicated in the text.
1. Santayana’s Spelling Santayana generally preferred British spelling forms, although American spellings are common in his early letters and manuscripts. No effort has been made to standardize spelling; words are reproduced as Santayana wrote them. He was a good speller and only rarely misspelled a word. (A curious exception is his repeated misspelling of the word ‘parliament’, in which he regularly metathesizes the ‘ia’ to ‘parlaiment’.) Notwithstanding Santayana’s competency in spelling, one of the idiosyncracies of his handwriting makes it generally impossible to distinguish between ‘s’ and ‘z’ in words that contain the letter sequence ‘is’ or ‘iz’. In those cases the editors provide the spelling that reflects Santayana’s unambiguous use of the same word elsewhere and the rules observed by British scholarly presses at the time (Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford, by Horace Hart, nineteenth edition, 1905, and thirtieth edition, 1936) in accordance with his stated preference for British spelling.
2. Santayana’s Punctuation The letters are generally conscientiously punctuated. But certain marks of punctuation used by Santayana have always troubled his editors, partly
438
Editorial Appendix
because of the difficulty of determining the specific mark of punctuation represented in his handwriting, and also because of certain idiosyncratic usages. For instance, Santayana’s colon and semicolon are frequently indistinguishable. That, of course, is characteristic of many writers’ handwritten manuscripts; but sometimes Santayana also used the colon where the semicolon is generally called for (as shown in his published writings for which he had read and approved proofs). Daniel Cory said that Santayana once told him that this unorthodox use of the colon was due to a habit of “thinking in opposition.” The procedure of the present editors has been to read a colon where clearly indicated on the holograph letter and commensurate with Santayana’s habitual usage; but where the punctuation mark is unclear on the holograph and is situated where a semicolon would be standard usage, we have read the mark as a semicolon. (Thus, our practice sometimes differs from that of Cory in Letters [1955] and The Later Years [1963], where he has in certain instances read colon and we have read semicolon.) One or two other punctuation problems have bedeviled Santayana’s editors. Santayana’s period frequently resembles a hyphen, and it has been read, by Daniel Cory and Bruno Lind, as a dash. Santayana’s dashes, however, are generally longer than this “sliding period,” which perhaps resulted from writing rapidly with an old-fashioned, holder-and-nib-type pen. Santayana also appears to vacillate in the letters between the British custom of placing on-line punctuation either inside or outside of quotation marks depending upon whether or not the on-line punctuation is part of the meaning of the matter quoted, and the American practice of uniformly placing it inside except for semicolons and colons, which are always placed outside the quotation marks. In every clear instance, we place the on-line punctuation either inside or outside the quotation marks, according to where it occurs on the holograph letter. However, when—as often happens—the on-line punctuation falls directly beneath the quotation marks, we place it inside the quotation marks. Except for this practice, no effort has been made to standardize the form.
3. Letters in Languages Other than English The comprehensive edition of Santayana’s letters contains forty-six items of correspondence by Santayana written in a language other than English. Santayana wrote in Spanish to members of the family of his half sister, Susan (her husband, and her stepsons and their wives in Ávila). There is also a formal letter in Spanish to Miguel de Unamuno. There is one letter in Italian to Dino Rigacci of 29 April 1945. Letters written in a language other than English appear in the original language of composition in the letters text, with a fairly literal English translation given in a footnote.
Textual Commentary
439
4. Recipients, Provenances, Addresses, and Dates A headnote is added to each letter, indicating the recipient, date and place of composition, and manuscript location (typically giving the name of the institution of higher learning if it houses one collection with correspondence by Santayana, but giving the name of a particular library or collection if the institution serves as repository of Santayana materials in more than one place):
To Otto Kyllmann 6 January 1933 • Rome, Italy
(MS: Temple)
A key to the manuscript location is found in the List of Manuscript Locations. ‘MS: Columbia’ means that the original holograph letter is in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. The textual notes give more information about particular collections. If the correspondence is a postcard or telegram, that will be indicated following ‘MS’.
To Henry Ward Abbot 29 August 1933 • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
(MS postcard: Columbia)
Also, an effort has been made to identify many, if not all, recipients with short biographical footnotes. Dates editorially supplied are placed in square brackets, uncertain dates being followed by a question mark. When the letter is written on printed stationery, the printed address is included in small capitals. Printed postcard captions are handled the same as printed stationery (SMALL CAPITALS), with no distinction being made. Pre-printed text is reproduced minimally, only to help the reader make sense of a letter, a telegram, or a picture postcard. No account is taken of envelopes, date stamps, or docketing by a recipient except when used to establish the date of a letter, the recipient thereof, or Santayana’s address. If a letter is dated by a postmark, that date is given in the header followed by ‘[postmark]’.
5. Signatures The usual signature on the letters is the writer’s standard ‘GSantayana’. The early form of his signature was ‘G. Santayana’ (as found, for instance, on the holograph of the letter to C. A. Strong of 26 February 1917). Later, he dropped the period following the first initial, carrying the stroke from the G to join the first letter of his last name.
440
Editorial Appendix
E. Editorial Footnotes to the Letters The policy of the comprehensive edition of Santayana’s letters regarding annotation is essentially to limit explanatory footnotes to supplying factual information likely to make the letter more intelligible or meaningful to the reader. However, some effort has been made in the case of letters dealing with events of great historical importance (e.g., the First and Second World Wars, or the Spanish civil war) to provide historical information that will help the reader place the letter in the historical context and for that reason perhaps better understand it. This principle of a fuller understanding has also informed our practice in regard to providing translations of foreign words or expressions in footnotes. Santayana read and spoke several languages, and he makes frequent use of words, phrases, or quotations in the letters from these languages, including Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. In order to facilitate the fullest possible understanding of the letters, we have included translations of foreign terms and phrases in the footnotes except in those instances where the foreign term or phrase is very commonplace or its meaning completely obvious. English translations of titles of books or articles in foreign languages are also provided in the footnotes if the work was translated. We have made fairly extensive use of information about Santayana’s life supplied by Daniel Cory in his book, Santayana: The Later Years: A Portrait With Letters (New York: George Braziller, 1963), frequently quoting directly from the book in footnotes. Any footnotes by Cory included in this edition are identified by the bracketed initials ‘[D. C.]’. The procedures for identifying persons mentioned in Santayana’s letters follow a standard routine. Full identification in the footnotes occurs at the first mention of the name. Subsequent occurrences of the name are noted in the index, which allows for cross-referencing. Names are first checked in authoritative dictionaries and encyclopedias (including the Dictionary of American Biography, the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Oxford Companion to American Literature, The Oxford Companion to English Literature, and the Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates of Harvard University, 1636–1925) and also in the “WorldCat” database of “FirstSearch” in the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC). In those instances in which no reference could be found, the notation “unidentified” appears in the footnotes and index. Lists of errata in Santayana’s published works, sent by him in or with letters to his publishers, are included with the letters with which they were transmitted. Such information may be useful to the reader of these letters in correcting his or her own copies of Santayana’s works. W.G.H. H.J.S. M.S.W.
Textual Commentary
441
Notes 1
G. Thomas Tanselle, “The Editing of Historical Documents,” Studies in Bibliography 31 (1978): 48. 2 Wheelock to Cory, 21 October 1952, Scribner Archives, Princeton University Library. 3 Edited by Joseph Jones, Chairman of the Committee on Manuscript Holdings, American Literature Group, Modern Language Association of America, et al. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1958). Second edition edited by Professor J. Albert Robbins, Chairman (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1977). The editors are grateful for the kind assistance provided by Professor Robbins in 1977 before the second edition of American Literary Manuscripts went to press. 4 Among the letters for which no holograph could be located and for which no photocopy is extant are twelve letters to Daniel Cory that Margot Cory copied by hand. These are not among the rest of Santayana’s letters to Cory in Columbia University’s Rare Book and Manuscript Library. They are dated 18 November 1927, 13 June 1933, 2 September 1933, 5 December 1934, 7 December 1934, 9 June 1935, 26 September 1935, 20 September 1936, 14 October 1937, 30 April 1938, 11 May 1938, and 18 May 1938. Similarly, we have not been able to locate the original holograph of the letter to Cory of 13 September 1950 and have had to transcribe the extract from it printed in Santayana: The Later Years (1963). 5 Mark Twain’s Letters, ed. Edgar Marquess Branch, Michael B. Frank, and Kenneth M. Sanderson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), Vol. 1, xxvi-xxvii, and xlv, footnote 1.
Short-Title List The following short-title list includes the works most frequently cited in the footnotes. Primary Sources Beauty The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: A. and C. Black, 1896. Critical edition edited by William G. Holzberger and Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1988. (Footnotes refer to critical edition page numbers.) Character Character and Opinion in the United States: With Reminiscences of William James and Josiah Royce and Academic Life in America. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd.; Toronto: McLeod, 1920. Complete Poems The Complete Poems of George Santayana: A Critical Edition. Edited by William G. Holzberger. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1979. Dialogues Dialogues in Limbo. London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1925; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926. Doctrine Winds of Doctrine: Studies in Contemporary Opinion. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: J. M. Dent & Sons Limited, 1913. Dominations Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty, Society, and Government. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd, 1951. Egotism Egotism in German Philosophy. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915; London and Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons Limited, 1916. Essays Little Essays: Drawn From the Writings of George Santayana by Logan Pearsall Smith, With the Collaboration of the Author. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1920. Genteel The Genteel Tradition at Bay. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: “The Adelphi,” 1931. Gospels The Idea of Christ in the Gospels; or, God in Man: A Critical Essay. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; Toronto: Saunders, 1946. Hermit A Hermit of Carmel and Other Poems. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1901; London: R. Brimley Johnson, 1902. Interpretations Interpretations of Poetry and Religion. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Black, 1900. Critical edition edited by William G.
444
Editorial Appendix
Holzberger and Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1989. (Footnotes refer to critical edition page numbers.) Letters The Letters of George Santayana. Edited by Daniel Cory. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1955. Lucifer “Lucifer, A Prelude.” In Sonnets and Other Verses. Cambridge and Chicago: Stone and Kimball, 1894. With changes becomes Act I of Lucifer: A Theological Tragedy. Chicago and New York: Herbert S. Stone, 1899. Obiter Obiter Scripta: Lectures, Essays and Reviews. Edited by Justus Buchler and Benjamin Schwartz. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1936. Persons Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography. Critical edition edited by William G. Holzberger and Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1986. Background Span Host
Persons and Places: The Background of My Life. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1944. The Middle Span. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1945; London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1947. My Host the World. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Cresset Press, 1953.
Platonism Platonism and the Spiritual Life. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1927. Poems Poems: Selected by the Author and Revised. London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1922; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1923. Poets Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1910. Puritan The Last Puritan. London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1935; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936; Critical edition edited by William G. Holzberger and Herman J. Saatkamp Jr. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994. (Footnotes refer to critical edition page numbers.) Realms Realms of Being. Four volumes. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1927-1940. Essence Matter Truth Spirit
The Realm of Essence: Book First of Realms of Being, 1927. The Realm of Matter: Book Second of Realms of Being, 1930. The Realm of Truth: Book Third of Realms of Being. Scribner’s, 1938; Constable and Toronto: Macmillan Company, 1937. The Realm of Spirit: Book Fourth of Realms of Being, 1940.
Realms (1 vol.) Realms of Being. One-volume edition, with a new introduction by the author. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1942.
Short-Title List
445
Reason The Life of Reason: or, the Phases of Human Progress. Five volumes. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd, 1905–1906. Common Sense Society Religion Art Science
Introduction and Reason in Common Sense. Volume 1, 1905. Reason in Society. Volume 2, 1905. Reason in Religion. Volume 3, 1905. Reason in Art. Volume 4, 1905. Reason in Science. Volume 5, 1906.
Scepticism Scepticism and Animal Faith: Introduction to a System of Philosophy. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1923. Soliloquies Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1922. Sonnets Kimball, 1894.
Sonnets and Other Verses. Cambridge and Chicago: Stone and
Testament The Poet’s Testament: Poems and Two Plays. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1953. Truce Revised limited second edition published as Lucifer, or the Heavenly Truce: A Theological Tragedy. Cambridge, MA: Dunster House; London: W. Jackson, 1924. Turns Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy: Five Essays. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933.
Other Works Philosophy Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods (later The Journal of Philosophy). New York: Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Santayana McCormick, John. George Santayana: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987. Years Cory, Daniel. Santayana: The Later Years: A Portrait with Letters. New York: George Braziller, 1963.
Textual Notes Numbers on the left (i.e. 3.11) refer to Critical Edition pages and lines (Volume V, Book Five). Line numbers refer to the text of the letters themselves. No heading or editorial footnotes are included in the count. The virgule ( / ) between words on the right of the bullet indicates a line break in the copy-text.
6 January 1933 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
3.11
devote/ ing • [‘i’ over ‘e’]
9 January 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 106–7. Emendations and textual notes:
4.8 4.9 4.17 5.7
sargeant • [sic] but • [period over comma ] /, . — don’t-you-knows • don’t-you- / knows rewritten • re- / written
15 January 1933 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 104, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
6.21–22 6.23–24
“A […] Philosophy by • [sic] Girl in Quest • [sic]
18 January 1933 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 104, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
7.12 7.17–18
8.7
criticising • [sic] they/ picture and its parts were substanial objects,/ . [illegible] ^ ^ ^^ pict– ure– and– its— par– ts • [erasure and transposition marked by – Santayana] anything • any- / thing
5:448
The Letters of George Santayana
19 January 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
25 January 1933 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
10.1
new • [in margin] ^ ^
5 February 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 107–8. Emendations and textual notes:
11.22
Richard’s • [sic]
12 February 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
12.1
Jan February • [‘Febr’ over ‘Jan’] —
6 March 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
12.17
Green • [sic]
7 March 1933 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
13.19
somewhere • some- / where
19 March 1933 • Charles Scribner Jr. • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
14.18 14.20
polyglot • poly- / glot willy-nilly • willy- / nilly
Textual Notes 14.28 14.29
5:449
my take • [sic] understands • under- / stands
28 March 1933 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 104, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
15.12 15.16 15.24
something • some- / thing somewhat • some- / what Sellar’s • [sic]
6 April 1933 • Logan Pearsall Smith • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Logan Pearsall Smith Papers, Manuscript Division, The Library of Congress. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
16.11 16.11 16.20
eraceable • [sic] pencil-lines • pencil- / lines stand-byes • [sic]
10 April 1933 • Henry Ward Abbot • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
10 April 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 108–9. Emendations and textual notes: none.
12 April 1933 • Logan Pearsall Smith • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Logan Pearsall Smith Papers, Manuscript Division, The Library of Congress. Previous publication: Letters, 279–80. Emendations and textual notes:
19.12 19.24
everything • every- / thing Nevertheless • Never- / theless
15 April 1933 • Sidney Hook • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections/Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Previous publication: Hook, “Letters from George Santayana,” The American Scholar 46 (Winter 1976–77): 78–79. Emendations and textual notes:
22.11
everything • every- / thing
5:450
The Letters of George Santayana
[Mid-April? 1933] • Charles Augustus Strong [Rome, Italy]
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 104, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
26 April 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 109–10, excerpt. Emendations and textual notes:
24.8
However • How- / ever
[May 1933] • Iris Cutting Origo • [Rome, Italy]
Copy-text: MS unlocated. Published version in Letters is copy-text. Previous publication: Letters, 280–81, excerpt; Origo, Images and Shadows: Part of a Life (London: John Murray, 1970), 267–68, excerpt. Emendations and textual notes:
25.13
fellow-materialists • fellow- / materialists
10 May 1933 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 104, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
26.17 26.22 26.24
something • some- / thing this mysticism • [‘mysticism’ over ‘this’] — out-worn • out- / worn
18 May 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 110–11. Emendations and textual notes:
27.9–10
big clear and • [sic]
31 May 1933 • George Washburne Howgate • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, collection of Mrs. George W. Howgate. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
29.10 and 13 29.13 29.26 30.6 30.16
MacS. • [sic] football • foot- / ball “Sonnet on “President • [sic] reprinted • re- / printed Macarthy • [sic]
Textual Notes
5:451
3 June 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 111–12. Emendations and textual notes:
32.8–9 32.9 32.11 32.15
type-written • type- / written noting —ed • [‘ed’ over ‘ing’] MacCready • [sic] 15th If • [sic]
3 June 1933 • Ralph Barton Perry • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1092.10), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
33.9–10
whoever • who- / ever
3 June 1933 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
34.17
he • [sic]
11 June 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
34.20 34.23
Roma/e • [‘e’ over ‘a’] rereading • re- / reading
13 June 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS unlocated. Copy-text is William G. Holzberger’s typed transcription of Mrs. Cory’s handwritten copy. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
35.6 35.11 35.12
22nd or 23rd • 22nd or 23rd 20th • 20th 1st • 1st.
19 June 1933 • Mary Annette Beauchamp Russell • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Countess Mary Annette (Beauchamp) Russell Collection, Box VII, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
35.22
flowerlike • flower- / like
5:452
The Letters of George Santayana
25 June 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 112. Emendations and textual notes:
36.16
Van Dyke • [sic]
10 July 1933 • William Lyon Phelps • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Previous publication: Phelps, Autobiography with Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939), 345–46; Letters, 282–83. Emendations and textual notes:
37.17 37.19
[illegible]special • [‘special’ over erasure] g is ves • [‘v’ over ‘s’] ^ ^ /^ ^
11 July 1933 • George Sturgis • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
38.28 38.30–31 39.8 39.8 39.10 39.22 39.25
m / seems • [‘se’ over ‘m’] (or … nature? • [sic] they — ings • [‘ings’ over ‘ey’] be re main • [‘re’ over ‘be’] — ^ ^ expense —diture • [‘di’ over ‘se’] a/out • [‘o’ over ‘a’] contend/tedly • [‘t’ over ‘d’]
14 July 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 112–13, excerpt Emendations and textual notes:
40.27 41.17
[illegible]thoroughly • [‘thorough’ over erasure] anything • any- / thing
14 July 1933 • Marie Mattingly Meloney • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Marie Mattingly Meloney Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
42.7
Lippman • [sic]
Textual Notes
5:453
21 July 1933 • Henry Ward Abbot • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
43.1 43.1 43.4–5
have —s • [‘s’ over ‘ve’] of Babel • [sic] lecture-room • lecture- / room
[Late July 1933] • Henry Ward Abbot • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. This note is written at the bottom of a typed letter dated 26 July 1933 to Santayana from R. A. L. Kingsford of the Cambridge University Press. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
[Before August 1933] • Antonio Marichalar • [Rome, Italy]
Copy-text: MS unlocated. Transcription of published fragment is copy-text. Previous publication: This excerpt is included in the first of two prefatory paragraphs to Marichalar’s translation into Spanish of “Ultimate Religion,” which appears in Revista de Occidente 2 (17 Aug 1933): 273. Emendations and textual notes: none.
4 August 1933 • Charles Augustus Strong • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 104, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
44.9
gentleman • gentle- / man
15 August 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
44.22
pag/ce • [‘c’ over ‘g’]
17 August 1933 • Charles P. Davis • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
45.29
or nor • [‘nor’ over ‘or’] —
5:454
The Letters of George Santayana
29 August 1933 • Henry Ward Abbot • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
2 September 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard unlocated. Copy-text is William G. Holzberger’s typed transcription of Mrs. Cory’s handwritten copy. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
47.4
it’s authors • [sic]
6 September 1933 • Charles Augustus Strong • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 104, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
47.15 47.18 47.18 47.19 48.17
passers-by • passers- / by a/ over • [‘ov’ over ‘a’] be • [in margin] ^ ^ [illegible]wires • [‘wir’ over unrecovered characters] high-church • high- / church
10 September 1933 • James C. Ayer • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, Francis Tinker Collection, Union College Library, Schenectady, New York. Previous publication: New England Quarterly, ed. Harold Larrabee, 30 (1957): 251–52. Emendations and textual notes:
48.23
another • an- / other
20 September 1933 • George Perrigo Conger • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Conger Papers, Manuscripts Division, University of Minnesota Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
49.15
sinere —cerely • [‘cer’ over ‘ere’]
22 September 1933 • George William Russell • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS unlocated. Photocopy of the original in the Denson Manuscripts, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, is copy-text. Previous publication: Letters, 283–84. Emendations and textual notes:
50.11 50.21 50.26
[illegible]now • [‘n’ over erasure] [illegible]at • [‘at’ over unrecovered characters] sphere All • sphere / All [sic]
Textual Notes
5:455
25 September 1933 • Charles Augustus Strong • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 104, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
51.16
something • some- / thing
25 September 1933 • John Hall Wheelock • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
2 October 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 113–14. Emendations and textual notes: none.
9 October 1933 • George Sturgis • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
53.28
wee/ ak • [‘a’ over ‘e’]
13 October 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 114. Emendations and textual notes:
55.2
essi— on appearance • [‘appearance’ over ‘impression’] impr— —
19 October 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 115–17. Emendations and textual notes:
55.21 56.6–7 56.22 56.26 56.36 56.36 57.12 57.15
/i Introduction • [‘I’ over ‘i’]
than that of • than that / that of in not • [sic] ‘commence” • [sic] paraphr —graphing • [‘gra’ over ‘phr’] think/ g • [‘g’ over ‘k’] forgotten • for- / gotten disp / cipline • [‘c’ over ‘p’]
5:456
The Letters of George Santayana
28 October 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
58.2
Yous • [sic]
8 November 1933 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
58.23
bathroom • bath- / room
13 November 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 117–18. Emendations and textual notes: none.
15 November 1933 • Sterling Power Lamprecht • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Miscellaneous Manuscripts, Special Collections, Amherst College Library. Previous publication: Letters, 284–85. Emendations and textual notes:
62.3 62.12
v.s. • [sic] actual datum • [ actual in margin ] ^ ^ ^ ^
20 November 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
27 November 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library,
Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 119–20. Emendations and textual notes: 64.7
something • some- / thing
28 November 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
Textual Notes
5:457
6 December 1933 • Henry Seidel Canby • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
65.5 65.7
of Bay • [sic] whatever • what- / ever
9 December 1933 • Evelyn Tindall • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
16 December 1933 • Wendell T. and Mary Potter Bush • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Letters, 286–87. Emendations and textual notes:
66.14 66.16 66.28 67.8 67.8 67.13 67.16 67.19 67.20
bitter sweet • bitter / sweet [sic] fore —urscore • [‘ur’ over ‘re’] unforseen • [sic] the his • [‘his’ over ‘the’] — the • [in margin] ^ ^ money-matters • money- / matters them me • [‘me’ over partially erased ‘them’] — grandchildren • grand- / children New Years • [sic]
16 December 1933 • Rafael Sastre González • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, collection of Adelaida Sastre, Ávila, Spain. Previous publication: Azafea 1 (University of Salamanca, 1985): 362. Emendations and textual notes:
68.8 68.17
Rusia . . • [sic] [illegible]se puede • [‘se puede’ over unrecovered characters]
16 December 1933 • Evelyn Tindall • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
16 December 1933 • Mr. Wallack • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS unlocated. Photocopy of original from Harriett Fitzgerald, Washington, DC, is copy-text. At one time original was with Paul C. Richards Autographs, Brookline, MA. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
5:458
The Letters of George Santayana
21 December 1933 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 104, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
70.22 71.6
Hedegger • [sic] nerve-centre • nerve- / centre
25 December 1933 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 120–21. Emendations and textual notes:
72.10 72.11 72.17 72.25 72.27 72.27
Nickeson • [sic] Babbit • [sic] overcome • over- / come mind I • mind / I [sic] acquatic • [sic] sometimes • some- / times
7 January 1934 • Boylston Adams Beal • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (MS Am 1371.8), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
73.8 73.26
imagined • [sic] Else/ie • [‘i’ over ‘e’]
16 January 1934 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
74.32
cussiedness • [sic]
20 January 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 122–24. Emendations and textual notes:
75.20 75.20 76.25 76.37 77.33 78.10
[illegible]ranging • [‘ranging’ over unrecovered characters] yourself on • [in margin] ^ ^ premisses • [sic] naïf) However • naïf) / However [sic] experience” Nice • experience” / Nice [sic] Dont • [sic]
Textual Notes
5:459
23 January 1934 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
79.2
Irskine • [sic]
26 January 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 124–27. Emendations and textual notes:
79.31 80.14 80.19 80.26 80.26 80.26 80.27
publisher’s • [sic] half-conscious • half- / conscious profitted • [sic] [illegible] • [unrecovered word cancelled by Santayana] find reduce • [‘reduce’ over ‘find’] — [illegible] • [unrecovered word cancelled by Santayana] [illegible]to • [‘to’ over erasure]
28 January 1934 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
81.16 82.8
bank-account • bank- / account gets/ ting • [‘t’ over ‘s’]
^
^
31 January 1934 • Mary Annette Beauchamp Russell • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Countess Mary Annette (Beauchamp) Russell Collection, Box VII, The Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
82.29
of for • [‘for’ over ‘of’] —
2 February 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 127. Emendations and textual notes:
83.16 83.26
philosophy/er • [‘er’ over ‘y’] somehow • some- / how
4 February 1934 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 105, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
5:460
The Letters of George Santayana
6 February 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
85.3
Licée • [sic]
7 February 1934 • Charles P. Davis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
13 February 1934 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
19 February 1934 • Evelyn Tindall • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
24 February 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 128–29. Emendations and textual notes:
88.15 88.16
highways • high- / ways this —ese • [‘ese’ over ‘is’]
26 February 1934 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
89.9 89.21 89.31 90.4
$ 250 dollars • [‘$’ in margin, sic] ^^ off-prints • off- / prints Sim’s • [sic] “Gashouse” • “Gas- / house”
6 March 1934 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
90.19 90.20
in the U.S,” • [sic] defied • [in bottom margin]
^
^
Textual Notes
5:461
13 March 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 129–30. Emendations and textual notes:
91.13 92.7 92.9
fortnight • fort- / night Senincourt • [sic] Babbit • [sic]
19 March 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 130, excerpt. Emendations and textual notes: none.
20 March 1934 • Harold Atkins Larrabee • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS unlocated. At one time it was in the possession of Professor Harold A. Larrabee. Typed transcription by William G. Holzberger is copy-text. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
93.27
GSantayana • G Santayana
20 March 1934 • Carl Clinton Van Doren • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Carl Van Doren Papers (Box 21, Folder 6), Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
94.8–9
copyrighted • copy- / righted
21 March 1934 • John Herman Randall Jr. • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, John H. Randall Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
94.18
when —at • [‘at’ over ‘en’]
[c. March 1934] • Mercedes Moritz Randall • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, John H. Randall Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
25 March 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 131–32. Emendations and textual notes:
96.4
L / Had • [‘H’ over ‘L’]
5:462
The Letters of George Santayana
25 March 1934 • Samuel Martin Thompson • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, collection of Samuel M. Thompson. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
4 April 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 132–33. Emendations and textual notes: none.
7 April 1934 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 105, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
99.17
a glimpe of • [sic]
8 April 1934 • Curt John Ducasse • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Brown University Archives. Previous publication: Letters, 287–88. Emendations and textual notes: none.
8 April 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
101.3 101.13
Strong-problem • Strong- / problem I thing • [sic]
14 April 1934 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
101.18 102.9
has/ve • [‘ve’ over ‘s’] may not be • [sic]
14 April 1934 • Evelyn Tindall • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
18 April 1934 • Evelyn Tindall • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
103.17 103.21
a/ two • [‘t’ over ‘a’] handwriting • hand- / writing
Textual Notes
5:463
25 April 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
104.9 104.13 104.16
gardner • [sic] afternoon • after- / noon no at • [sic]
5 May 1934 • Adelaide Howard • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard unlocated. A typescript by Adelaide Howard (quoting part of Santayana’s card) in the Northwestern University Archives, Baker Brownell Papers, Box 19, Folder 1, is copy-text. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
105.5
sometimes • some- / times
6 May 1934 • Evelyn Tindall • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
10 May 1934 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 105, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
11 May 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
106.17
for something • some- / thing
14 May 1934 • Stuart Gerry Brown • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, Stuart Gerry Brown Papers, Syracuse University Library, Department of Special Collections. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
107.4 107.11 107.13
Babbit • [sic] this —eir • [‘eir’ over ‘is’] Nietzcs —sche • [‘sc’ over ‘cs’]
15 May 1934 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 105, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
5:464 108.6 108.8
The Letters of George Santayana bloodshed • blood- / shed who/at • [‘a’ over ‘o’]
20 May 1934 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 105, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
108.22 109.19
overlook • over- / look invoke,/ (the • [‘(’ over ‘,’]
25 May 1934 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 105, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
26 May 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 133, excerpt. Emendations and textual notes:
111.13 111.21
autobiography • auto- / biography ill-tempered • ill- / tempered
30 May 1934 • Evelyn Tindall • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
3 June 1934 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 105, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
112.16 112.28 113.3 113.8 113.13 113.19 113.34 113.35
photagraphed • [sic] c M–Dougal’s • [sic] c/ sensation • [‘s’ over ‘c’] tw/oward • [‘o’ over ‘w’] de/istinguished • [‘i’ over ‘e’] anything • any- / thing quiet —te • [‘te’ over ‘et’] ther/ ir • [‘’i’ over ‘r’]
Textual Notes
5:465
4 June 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 133–34, excerpt. Emendations and textual notes:
114.25
here —ars • [‘ar’ over ‘re’]
7 June 1934 • Evelyn Tindall • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
8 June 1934 • Sidney Hook • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections/Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Previous publication: Hook, “Letters from George Santayana,” The American Scholar 46 (Winter 1976–77): 79–80. Emendations and textual notes:
116.21 116.30 117.7
Nazi’s • [sic] would —n’t • [‘n’t’ over ‘uld’] assumed./ in flowing. • [‘in’ over ‘.’ and ‘flowing.’ in margin]
^
^
11 June 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 134, excerpt. Emendations and textual notes:
117.19 117.22
Lippman • [sic] of • [in margin]
^ ^
11 June 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
16 June 1934 • Evelyn Tindall • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
16 June 1934 • Harry Austryn Wolfson • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: Leo W. Schwartz, Wolfson of Harvard: Portrait of a Scholar (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1978), 103–4. Emendations and textual notes:
120.10 120.19
phil o sopher Your • phil o sopher / Your [sic] ^^ ^^ particular keen • [sic]
5:466
The Letters of George Santayana
22 June 1934 • Evelyn Tindall • Fiesole, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
25 June 1934 • Henry Seidel Canby • Fiesole, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
121.28
everything • every- / thing
25 June 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Fiesole, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 134–35. Emendations and textual notes:
123.6
everywhere • every- / where
3 July 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Fiesole, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
123.29
Glanville’s • [sic]
8 July 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Fiesole, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 135. Emendations and textual notes: none.
9 July 1934 • George Sturgis • Fiesole, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
124.22
household • house- / hold
10 July 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Fiesole, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 136–37. Emendations and textual notes:
125.13 125.19 125.22 126.4
“Nothing!” • [‘Nothing’ underlined three times] grandchildren • grand- / children sometimes • some- / times your his • [‘his’ above ‘your — —’] ^ ^
Textual Notes
5:467
12 July 1934 • Charles Earle Funk • Fiesole, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
126.23
English-speaking • English- / speaking
23 July 1934 • Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Brooklyn College Archives. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
127.31 127.32
re-assert • re- / assert however • how- / ever
25 July 1934 • Mary Potter Bush • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
128.13 128.18 128.23 128.25
somehow • some- / how acknowlege —dgements • [‘dge’ over ‘ge’] landlord • land- / lord somewhat • some- / what
25 July 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 137. Emendations and textual notes:
129.9 129.25
glimpe • [sic] mid-day • mid- / day
25 July 1934 • Charles Augustus Strong • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 105, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
130.25
its —nto • [‘nt’ over ‘ts’]
12 August 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 138. Emendations and textual notes:
131.4 131.4
S / strong • [‘s’ over ‘S’] I instinctive • [sic]
5:468
The Letters of George Santayana
16 August 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 138–39. Emendations and textual notes:
131.24
flat a San Michele • [sic]
20 August 1934 • Horace Meyer Kallen • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York City. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
26 August 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 139–40. Emendations and textual notes: none.
28 August 1934 • Charles Augustus Strong • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 105, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
6 September 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 140–41. Emendations and textual notes:
135.24
anybody • any- / body
25 September 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 141–42. Emendations and textual notes: none.
26 September 1934 • Charles Augustus Strong • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 105, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
3 October 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
Textual Notes
5:469
3 October 1934 • George Sturgis • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: 138.17 August 31–st I • [sic]
5 October 1934 • Victor Francis Calverton • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Victor Francis Calverton Papers, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
139.16 139.17
prs/eserved • [‘e’ over ‘s’] upright • up- / right
7 October 1934 • George Sturgis • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
13 October 1934 • Victor Francis Calverton • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Victor Francis Calverton Papers, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Previous publication: Sidney Hook, “Letters from George Santayana,” The American Scholar 46 (Winter 1976–77): 80–81. Emendations and textual notes: none.
20 October 1934 • Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Brooklyn College Archives. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
141.7 141.34 142.11 142.14
knw/ ow • [‘o’ over ‘w’] /, (running [...] numbers,/) • [parentheses over commas] “Biosophical Review • [sic] Foreford • [sic]
20 October 1934 • George Lawton • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS unlocated. Typed transcription by William G. Holzberger is copytext. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
143.6
GSantayana • G Santayana
23 October 1934 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 105, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
143.13
shr/irt-collar • shr/ irt- / collar [‘i’ over ‘r’]
5:470
The Letters of George Santayana
24 October 1934 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 105, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
26 October 1934 [postmark ] • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 142–43. Emendations and textual notes:
144.8 144.12
Oct. 27, • [sic] acknowldged • [sic]
2 November 1934 • Evelyn Tindall • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
3 November 1934 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 105, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
4 November 1934 • Nancy Saunders Toy • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS unlocated. A typewritten copy in the Sperry Papers, courtesy of the Harvard University Archives, is copy-text. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
147.3 148.15 148.16
Mrs. Toy • Mrs. Toy: Yours sincerely • Yours sincerely, GSantayana • G. Santayana
6 November 1934 • Victor Wolfgang von Hagen • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS unlocated. Last known in the possession of Victor Wolfgang. von Hagen. Typed transcription by William G. Holzberger is copy-text. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
149.10
GSantayana • G. Santayana
12 November 1934 [postmark] • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
149.14 149.20–21
’94 • [sic] correspondances • [sic]
Textual Notes
5:471
12 November 1934 • Evelyn Tindall • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
15 November 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 143–45. Emendations and textual notes:
150.16 151.21
if/n • [‘n’ over ‘f’] never had had • [sic]
17 November 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
152.8 152.10 152.15
anybody • any- / body something • some- / thing Scribners • [sic]
18 November 1934 • Victor Francis Calverton • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Victor Francis Calverton Papers, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
153.25 153.31 153.33 153.34–35 154.1 154.1 154.5 154.10
bes most • [‘mo’ over ‘bes’] — Babbit • [sic] will might • [‘might’ over ‘will’] — understand • under- / stand [illegible]natural • [‘natural’ over erasure] su taste • [‘ta’ over ‘su’] — that/n • [‘n’ over ‘t’] /IYou • [‘Y’ over ‘I’]
22 November 1934 • Amy Maud Bodkin • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Eng. misc. c. 576, fols. 188–91, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
155.3
’94 • [sic]
26 November 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 145, excerpt. Emendations and textual notes:
156.19
p / back • [‘b’ over ‘p’]
5:472
The Letters of George Santayana
28 November 1934 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
157.26 158.4 158.7
Puritan” • [sic] America?/. • [‘.’ over erased ‘?’] persons.—a • [sic]
3 December 1934 • Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Brooklyn College Archives. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
158.17 158.21 158.21 158.22 159.8
succint • [sic]
/t Two • [‘T’ over ‘t’]
Idealism /’ s” • [‘s’ over apostrophe] glade/ly • [‘l’ over ‘e’] [illegible]have written • [‘have written’ over unrecovered characters]
5 December 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS unlocated. Copy-text is William G. Holzberger’s typed transcription of Mrs. Cory’s handwritten copy. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
7 December 1934 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
7 December 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS unlocated. Copy-text is William G. Holzberger’s typed transcription of Mrs. Cory’s handwritten copy. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
11 December 1934 • Two Bryn Mawr Students • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS unlocated. A typed transcription in the Manuscript Division, The Library of Congress, is copy-text. Previous publication: Letters, 288–89. Emendations and textual notes:
162.20 162.28
what • about GSantayana • G. Santayana
12 December 1934 • Amy Maud Bodkin • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Eng. misc. c. 576, fols. 188–91, Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
Textual Notes 163.6–7 163.11 163.24 163.25 163.27
5:473
re written • [‘w’ over ‘re’] — recurrence • recur- / currence sympathiz\se • [‘s’ over ‘z’ sic] criticised • [sic] he make • [‘m’ over ‘he’] —
14 December 1934 • Frederick Champion Ward • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS unlocated. Published version is copy-text. Previous publication: Letters, 289. Emendations and textual notes:
164.20
GSantayana • [not present]
17 December 1934 • Evelyn Tindall • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
25 December 1934 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
25 December 1934 • Charles P. Davis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
27 December 1934 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 105, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
167.11 168.6
which somebody • which some- / body pineapple? • pine- / apple?
10 January 1935 • Victor Francis Calverton • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Victor Francis Calverton Papers, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
168.32
There —ir • [‘ir’ over ‘re’]
14 January 1935 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
5:474
The Letters of George Santayana
169.25 169.32
remi/nants a/or • [‘or’ over ‘a’]
19 January 1935 • Sylvia Hortense Bliss • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: Letters, 290–91. Emendations and textual notes:
170.22
mock-religious • mock- / religious
24 January 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 146–47. Emendations and textual notes:
172.4 172.15 172.21 172.26
gain capital • [sic] wondered it it would • [sic] Merideth • [sic] Carlo • [sic]
26 January 1935 • Frederick Champion Ward • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS unlocated. Published version is copy-text. Previous publication: Letters, 291–93. Emendations and textual notes:
174.25 175.5
undergraduates • under- / graduates GSantayana • [not present]
[February 1935] • Evelyn Tindall • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
175.10 175.11
oversteps • over- / steps plas —ease • [‘ea’ over ‘as’]
10 February 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 147–48, excerpt. Emendations and textual notes: none.
18 February 1935 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: Letters, 293–94. Emendations and textual notes:
177.23 177.24 177.26–27
Son-Wagons-Lits) • Son- / Wagons-Lits) obliged My • obliged / My [sic] sitting-room • sitting- / room
Textual Notes
5:475
5 March 1935 • Corliss Lamont • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS unlocated. A typed transcription in the George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, is copy-text. Previous publication: Letters, 294–95. Emendations and textual notes:
178.6 178.32 179.12 179.13
C
/o • c/o Nietsche • [sic] Yours sincerely • Yours sincerely, GSantayana • G. Santayana
12 March 1935 • Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Brooklyn College Archives. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
179.19
attitud • [sic]
26 March 1935 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
27 March 1935 • Henry Seidel Canby • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Collection (#6947), Clifton Waller Barrett Library, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
29 March 1935 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
181.10 181.20 182.2
st In • [sic ] May 1– non-combatant • non- / combatant anyone • any- / one
1 April 1935 • Louis Alexander Freedman • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Louis Alexander Freedman Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
7 April 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
183.20
[‘the’ over ‘it’] it —the•
5:476
The Letters of George Santayana
8 April 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
11 April 1935 • Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
11 April 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
185.7
type-written • type- / written
20 April 1935 • Boylston Adams Beal • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
185.25 185.27–28
Drunk’s Exercice • [sic] • [‘ap’ over ‘ev’] ev —apart
20 April 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
28 April 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
30 April 1935 • Max Forrester Eastman • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Eastman Manuscripts, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
188.27 189.6
[illegible]very • [‘ve’ over unrecovered characters] o/in • [‘i’ over ‘o’]
3 May 1935 • David Page • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
190.1
something • some- / thing
Textual Notes
5:477
8 May 1935 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: Letters, 295–96. Emendations and textual notes:
190.8 190.11 190.14
June 1–st The • [sic ] however • how- / ever Anyhow • Any- / how
9 May 1935 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
191.22 191.27
typescript • type- / script distance —t • [‘t’ over partially erased ‘ce’]
13 May 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
192.7
typescript • type- / script
16 May 1935 • Pauline Holmes • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
193.3 193.17
para/ody • [‘o’ over ‘a’] philosophy, —er, • [‘er,’ over ‘y,’]
18 May 1935 • William Lyon Phelps • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
20 May 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
195.1 195.1 195.4
counter-criticism • counter- / criticism high-strung • high- / strung w/ how • [‘h’ over ‘w’]
5:478
The Letters of George Santayana
28 May 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 152–53. Emendations and textual notes:
196.11 196.11
type-written • type- / written Scribners • [sic]
30 May 1935 • Boylston Adams Beal • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (MS Am 1371.8), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
7 June 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
7 June 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
198.9–10 198.10
evprobably • [‘pr’ over ‘ev’] — 3 / 5 • [‘5’ over ‘3’]
7 June 1935 • George Sturgis • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
199.30
Dont • [sic]
9 June 1935 • John Hall Wheelock • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
200.10 200.20 200.27 200.28
ra/ etain • [‘e’ over ‘a’] S/ sell • [‘s’ over ‘S’] sure than your • [sic] copyright • copy- / right
9 June 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS unlocated. Copy-text is William G. Holzberger’s typed transcription of Mrs. Cory’s handwritten copy. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
Textual Notes
5:479
13 June 1935 • Sterling Power Lamprecht • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Dartmouth College Library. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
202.16
of you course • [sic]
18 June 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
18 June 1935 • John Hall Wheelock • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
203.10 203.14
t/The • [‘T’ over ‘t’] sod/ldering • [‘l’ over ‘d’]
21 June 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
204.5
t/The • [‘T’ over ‘t’]
21 June 1935 • Charles Augustus Strong • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
205.9
proof MS • [‘MS’ above ‘proof — —’] ^ ^
23 June 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
205.33–206.1
[illegible]pushed forward • [‘pushed forward’ over erased words]
26 June 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 153–54. Emendations and textual notes:
207.1
Bhagavah-Gitâ • [sic]
5:480
The Letters of George Santayana
26 June 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
208.5 and 14 208.14
Thakeray Hotel • [sic] kept —ep • [‘ep’ over ‘pt’]
28 June 1935 • George Sturgis • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
209.9 209 [chart ]
Meantime • Mean- / time E / Mrs. • [‘M’ over ‘E’]
29 June 1935 • Manuel Komroff • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Manuel Komroff Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
211.10
[illegible ]is • [‘i’ over erasure]
1 July 1935 • John Hall Wheelock • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: 212.13 origin,/ al, • [‘al’ over ‘,’]
^ ^
4 July 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 154–55. Emendations and textual notes:
212.30 212.31 213.1 213.17 213.18 213.26 213.28 213.30–32
wierd • [sic] with —e— xact— itude and competence. ; • [‘and competence.’ above — ^ ^ ‘with xact— itude ’ sic] ——e— Yates • [sic] /tfor • [‘f’ over ‘t’] [illegible]though • [‘though’ over unrecovered characters] [illegible]field • [‘field’ over unrecovered characters] conv/ceived • [‘ce’ over ‘v’] “L’attribut […] l’esprit. • [sic]
Textual Notes
5:481
5 July 1935 • Mary Potter Bush • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Letters, 297–98. Emendations and textual notes:
215.7–8 215.28 215.33
starting-point • starting- / point true thing name • [‘true’ in margin and ‘name’ over ‘thing’] ^ ^— sh —expect • [‘ex’ over ‘sh’]
11 July 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
216.8
Wyckham • [sic]
13 July 1935 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
217.10–11 217.10 217.21 217.31
Do you […] otherwise. • [in margin] ^ ^ wan’t • [sic ] therefore • there- / fore pleasure Otherwise • [sic ]
16 July 1935 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
20 July 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
218.18
H / hotel • [‘h’ over ‘H’]
22 July 1935 • John Hall Wheelock • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
219.14
[illegible]wish • [‘wish’ over unrecovered characters]
5:482
The Letters of George Santayana
26 July 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 156–57. Emendations and textual notes:
219.25 220.16 220.16 220.17 220.18 220.28 220.33 221.3
anythink/ g • [‘g’ over ‘k’] h/Hotel • [‘H’ over ‘h’] Kyllman • [sic] Mrs Alden • [sic ] nefor • [‘fo’ over ‘ne’] — cout/ntry • [‘n’ over ‘t’] S. John • [sic] S / I don’t • [‘I’ over ‘S’]
26 July 1935 • David Page • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
27 July 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
222.17 222 25 223.8 223.8 223.8 223.25 223.29
p. 321 • [page numbers in margin are underlined in blue pencil] pages 654–656 • [underlined in blue pencil] in the • [‘the’ over ‘in’] — a/ in • [‘in’ over ‘a’] page 643 • [underlined in blue pencil] c/ habitual • [‘h’ over ‘c’] [illegible]favourable • [‘favourable’ over erasure]
27 July 1935 • John Hall Wheelock • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
224.10 224.18 224.22 224.28
o/ taking • [‘t’ over ‘o’] pes/rsons • [‘r’ over ‘s’] [illegible ]by • [‘by’ over erasure] hisDr. • [‘Dr.’ over ‘his’] —
28 July 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 157. Emendations and textual notes: none.
Textual Notes
5:483
1 August 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
226.9–10
however • how- / ever
6 August 1935 • Charles Augustus Strong • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
226.18
vagu[illegible]ely • [‘ely’ over unrecovered characters]
18 August 1935 • John Hall Wheelock • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
228.18
premisses • [sic]
25 August 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 157–58. Emendations and textual notes:
229.3 229.6 229.7
anything • any- / thing something • some- / thing “sense-data” • “sense- / data”
25 August 1935 • Bonamy Dobrée • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, The Brotherton Collection, Leeds University Library. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
26 August 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
230.19
G / Yes • [‘Y’ over ‘G’]
28 August 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. No manuscript exists for the list, but a typescript in the same collection is copy-text. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
231.15
P. T. O. • [in margin]
5:484
The Letters of George Santayana
28 August 1935 • John Hall Wheelock • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
3 September 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
233.29
such a • [sic]
13 September 1935 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
14 September 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
17 September 1935 • Charles Augustus Strong • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
236.5 236.12 236.20 236.22–23 236.23 236.29
ds hundreds • [‘hundreds’ over ‘crowds’] crow —— m Mind • [‘M’ over ‘m’] / arran— gem— ents provision • [‘provision’ above ‘arran gem— ents ’] — —— ^ ^ Bellamy Dobrée • [sic] he editing • he / editing [sic] sense-data • sense- / data
19 September 1935 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: Telegram, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
22 September 1935 • John Hall Wheelock • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
237.15 238.1
Puritan Thank • Puritan / Thank [sic] proof-readers • proof- / readers
Textual Notes
5:485
24 September 1935 • Charles Augustus Strong • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
238.22 238.26 239.6 239.7
k/ now • [‘n’ over ‘k’] / “ term• [‘t’ over quotes] large-scale • large- / scale [illegible]dramatic • [‘dr’ over unrecovered characters]
26 September 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 158–59. Emendations and textual notes:
239.27 239.30 240.2 240.18
someone • some- / one [illegible]What • [‘Wh’ over unrecovered characters] [illegible]profits • [‘p’ over unrecovered character ] psychoanalysis • psycho- / analysis
26 September 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard unlocated. Copy-text is William G. Holzberger’s typed transcription of Mrs. Cory’s handwritten copy. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
26 September 1935 • Sterling Power Lamprecht • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Dartmouth College Library. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
27 September 1935 • John Hall Wheelock • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
3 October 1935 • George Sturgis • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: Letters, 298–99; A. Bonilla, “Tres Cartas de Jorge Santayana,” Revista de Filosofía 1 (University of Costa Rica, 1958): 343. Emendations and textual notes:
243.9 243.9 243.10
twelve,/ (and • [‘(’ over ‘,’] twelves/ —e— very— year • [‘every year’ above ‘twelves/’ ^ ^ —— every year • [in bottom margin]
^
^
5:486
The Letters of George Santayana
12 October 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
14 October 1935 • George Sturgis • Venice, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
17 October 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
245.17 246.2
missprints • [sic] to/wo • [‘w’ over ‘o’]
17 October 1935 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
246.12 247.7
missprints • [sic] “belongs) • [sic]
19 October 1935 • Ellen Shaw Barlow • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: Letters, 299–300. Emendations and textual notes:
247.22–23
it, them, • [‘th’ over ‘it,’] —
19 October 1935 • Robert Shaw Barlow • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: Letters, 300–301. Emendations and textual notes:
248.22 249.18
Bangs’s • [sic] anti-English • anti- / English
22 October 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
250.12 250.13
Press-Cutting • Press- / Cutting tendencies —y • [‘y’ over ‘ies’]
Textual Notes
5:487
23 October 1935 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
251.22 251.23 251.23
parlaimentarism • [sic] mob-like • mob- / like parlaiment • [sic]
26 October 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 159–60. Emendations and textual notes:
252.11 252.15 253.6
than to sit • than to / to sit too,/? o/ Or • [‘? O’ over ‘, o’] something • some- / thing
28 October 1935 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: A. Bonilla, “Tres Cartas de Jorge Santayana,” Revista de Filosofía 1 (University of Costa Rica, 1958): 344. Emendations and textual notes:
253.25 254.12
rewrite • re- / write “sanctions”, : • [sic]
^
31 October 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 160–61. Emendations and textual notes:
254.23 254.28 255.1 255.23 255.31
he Oli ver • [‘Oli’ over ‘he’ and ‘ver’ in margin] — ^ ^ incapity • [sic] if very • [sic] Fräulein’s • Fräu, / lein’s verklär te • verklär / te [sic]
2 November 1935 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: A. Bonilla, “Tres Cartas de Jorge Santayana,” Revista de Filosofía 1 (University of Costa Rica, 1958): 344. Emendations and textual notes:
256.8
promime —nent • [‘ne’ over ‘me’]
5:488
The Letters of George Santayana
12 November 1935 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
257.7 257.22
bank-account • bank- / account more • [in margin ]
^
^
14 November 1935 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
16 November 1935 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
258.10 258.18
photographs/ ers • [‘er’ over ‘s’] excentric • [sic]
21 November 1935 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
259.13 259.15 259.19 259.22–23 259.22 259.25–26 260.6 260.8
“balled up”. and • “balled up”. / and [sic] a healthily • [in margin, sic] ^^ photograph • photo- / graph School friends • [in margin] ^ ^ Willians —ms • [‘m over ‘ns’] Younger friends. • [in margin] ^ ^ the being • [‘being’ over partially erased ‘the’] — anti-militarists • anti- / militarists
25 November 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 162. Emendations and textual notes:
261.14
self-evident • self- / evident
30 November 1935 • Llewelyn Powys • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
Textual Notes
5:489
6 December 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 162–64, excerpt. Emendations and textual notes:
262.15 263.20 264.6 264.25
chaise-longue • [sic] money-matters • money- / matters somehow • some- / how exitence • [sic]
10 December 1935 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
265.18 265.24 266.1
mbercollect • [‘collect’ over ‘member’] reme —— spend-thrift • spend- / thrift and who • [sic]
11 December 1935 • Rafael Sastre González • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, collection of Adelaida Sastre, Ávila, Spain. Previous publication: Azafea 1 (University of Salamanca, 1985): 362–63. Emendations and textual notes:
267.2
miede • [sic]
12 December 1935 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
268.2
Otherwise • Other- / wise
15 December 1935 • Sidney Hook • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections/Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Previous publication: Hook, “Letters from George Santayana,” The American Scholar 46 (Winter 1976–77): 81–82. Emendations and textual notes:
269.9 and 12 269.17
Russell and Moore’s • [sic] possible/ y • [‘y’ over ‘e’]
23 December 1935 • Boylston Adams Beal • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (Autograph file), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
270.19 270.23
sometimes • some- / times Forbes’s • [sic]
5:490 270.29 271.5 271.22
The Letters of George Santayana landlords • land- / lords novel-reading • novel- / reading landlady • land- / lady
25 December 1935 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
272.8 272.8 272.11 272.28
otherwise • other- / wise [illegible]Still, • [‘Still’ over erasure] pasta asciuta • [sic] Eliots comparison • [sic]
25 December 1935 • George and Rosamond Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
273.5 273.5 273.19 273.21
azalias • [sic] Parlaiment • [sic] goodbye • good- / bye sitting-room • sitting- / room
[1936?] • Unidentified Recipient • [Rome, Italy]
Copy-text: MS unlocated. Published version is copy-text. Previous publication: partial letter in Indice 7 (15 Oct 1952): 7. Emendations and textual notes:
274.16
estusiastas • [sic]
1 January 1936 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
275.12
1806 • [sic]
5 January 1936 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
277.1
Büchler • [sic]
6 January 1936 • Bonamy Dobrée • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, The Brotherton Collection, Leeds University Library. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
Textual Notes
5:491
9 January 1936 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
277.24 278.16 278.27 279.5 279.6 279.23
semicircular • semi- / circular Book-Club • Book- / Club something • some- / thing MacGhie • Mac / Ghie sometimes • some- / times older and I • [sic]
13 January 1936 • [Frank Raymond Leavis] • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. The letter is with the manuscript of “Tragic Philosophy.” Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
280.8
prompted to • [sic]
17 January 1936 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
25 January 1936 • Gorham Bert Munson • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Collection (#6947), Clifton Waller Barrett Library, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
281.14 281.16 281.25 281.29
centa/ral • [‘r’ over ‘a’] n/Now • [‘N’ over ‘n’] but yet • [‘yet’ over ‘but’] — it:/. — but In • [period over colon and ‘In’ over ‘but’]
26 January 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
282.19 282.23 283.1
taking so long • taking so / so long bottle-washer • bottle- / washer understand • under- / stand
26 January 1936 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
5:492
The Letters of George Santayana
1 February 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
284.34 285.1
late ’80, • [sic] off-print • off- / print
2 February 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 165–66. Emendations and textual notes:
286.8 286.19 286.20
st go aying • [‘ay’ over ‘go’] title-tattle • [sic] and with • [‘with’ over ‘and’] —
^ ^—
5 February 1936 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
286.29 286.30
undertake • under- / take negaciations • [sic]
5 February 1936 • Rosamond Thomas Bennett Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: Letters, 302–3. Emendations and textual notes:
288.11 288.12 288.12 288.13 288.17 288.31 289.16 289.21 289.26 289.26 289.31
[illegible]waste the best years • [‘waste the best years’ over unrecovered characters] of • [in margin] ^ ^ But — h/He • [‘H’ over ‘h’] quasi-philosopher • quasi- / philosopher HeMorley • [‘Mo’ over ‘He’] — [illegible]ought • [‘ought’ over erasure] [illegible]served better • [‘served better’ over unrecovered characters] look— up verify • [‘verify’ over ‘look up’] — “Drunks • [sic] walk took • [‘took’ over ‘walk’] — undergraduate • under- / graduate
7 February 1936 • Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Brooklyn College Archives. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
Textual Notes
5:493
8 February 1936 • Henry Seidel Canby • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Previous publication: Saturday Review of Literature 13 (7 Mar 1936): 19, excerpt. Emendations and textual notes:
291.9 291.9 291.10 291.11 291.13 291.13–14 291.16 291.23 291.25 291.27 291.29 291.30
mal/de • [‘d’ over ‘l’] clear-sighted • clear- / sighted undergraduate • under- / graduate Olivers • [sic] a y go • [‘a’ in margin and ‘g’ over ‘y’] ^ ^/ main stream • main / stream [sic] [illegible] James • [‘Jam’ over unrecovered characters] therefore • there- / fore [illegible ]be • [‘be’ over unrecovered characters ] of the • [sic] ar —see m • [‘se’ over ‘ar’] ^ ^ lifelong • life- / long
10 February 1936 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
293.1
into • [‘to’ over ‘in’] —
12 February 1936 • William Jackson, Ltd. • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
293.23
book-form • book- / form
15 February 1936 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
294.7–8 294.10 294.13 294.14 294.15 294.34 295.4 295.19
hadn’t seem • [sic] without • with- / out /spious ly • [‘p’ over ‘s’] reprepare • [‘pr’ over ‘re’] — anywhere • any- / where parlaiment • [sic] w/ should • [‘sh’ over ‘w’] something • some- / thing
5:494
The Letters of George Santayana
16 February 1936 • William Lyon Phelps • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Previous publication: Phelps, Autobiography with Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939), 346–48; Letters, 304–5. Emendations and textual notes:
296.6 296.6 297.6 297.31
h/could • [‘c’ over ‘h’] background • back- / ground d/Dialogues • [‘D’ over ‘d’] ov had • [‘ha’ over ‘ov’] —
18 February 1936 • Charles P. Davis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
298.8 298.11 298.12 298.19
letter-writer • letter- / writer Book-of-the-Month • Book-of-the- / Month promissed • [sic] [illegible ]spots • [‘spots’ over unrecovered characters]
18 February 1936 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
299.20
déjèûner • [sic]
19 February 1936 • Benjamin De Casseres • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS unlocated, formerly at the Brooklyn Public Library but recently sold at auction to a private individual. Photocopy from the library is copy-text. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
19 February 1936 • David Page • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: The Nationalist Quarterly (Winter 1938). Emendations and textual notes: none.
24 February 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 166–68. Emendations and textual notes:
301.18 302.1 302.15
Book-of-the-Month • Book- / of-the-Month Commerce However • [sic] however • how- / ever
Textual Notes 302.18 303.4 303.5
5:495
fault-finding • fault- / finding elsewhere • else / where understand • under / stand
28 February 1936 • José Sastre González • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, collection of Sra. Eduardo Sastre Martín, Madrid, Spain. Previous publication: Crisis 17 (Madrid, 1970): 75. Emendations and textual notes:
304.3 304.16 304.17
frus[illegible]trados • [‘trados’ over an erasure] tei —iempo • [‘ie’ over ‘ei’] tie— nes son • [‘son’ over ‘tienes’] —
3 March 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 168–69. Emendations and textual notes:
305.5 305.9 306.6
bank-account • bank- / account supervision • super- / vision in to• [sic]
16 March 1936 • William Lyon Phelps • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Previous publication: Phelps, Autobiography with Letters (New York: Oxford University Press, 1939), 348–49; Letters, 306–7. Emendations and textual notes:
307.5 and 12 307.7
Anabel • [sic] Cheerybell Brothers • [sic]
18 March 1936 • C. L. Shelby • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Collection (#6947), Clifton Waller Barrett Library, Special Collections Department, University of Virginia Library. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
20 March 1936 • Mr. Gross • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS unlocated. Last known in the collection of Samuel Wheeler. Published version is copy-text. Previous publication: H. T. Kirby-Smith, A Philosophical Novelist: George Santayana and “The Last Puritan” (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), 197. Emendations and textual notes:
308.12 308.12 308.13 309.7
C
/o • c/o C o • Co. S.W.1 • S. W. 1 GSantayana • G. Santayana
5:496
The Letters of George Santayana
25 March 1936 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
309.17
was lost in • was lost / lost in
26 March 1936 • Cyril Coniston Clemens • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Cyril C. Clemens Papers, Special Collections Library, Duke University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
26 March 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 169. Emendations and textual notes:
311.9–10 311.12 311.15–16
something • some- / thing exdefended • [‘de’ over ‘ex’] — whatever • what- / ever
28 March 1936 • Bonamy Dobrée • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, The Brotherton Collection, Leeds University Library. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
29 March 1936 • Robert Shaw Barlow • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: Letters, 307–8. Emendations and textual notes:
312.27 313.1 313.10 313.28
e/America • [‘A’ over ‘e’] [illegible]50 • [‘50’ over unrecovered characters] Anglo-Americans • Anglo- / Americans T / And • [‘A’ over ‘T’]
29 March 1936 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
314.6 314.16
anybody • any- / body Book-of-the Month • [sic]
30 March 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
Textual Notes
5:497
1 April 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 170–71. Emendations and textual notes:
316.20–21
bad-tempered • bad- / tempered
1 April 1936 • Henrietta Auchmity Sturgis Ingersoll • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS unlocated. At one time it was in the possession of R. Sturgis Ingersoll. Typed transcription by William G. Holzberger is copy-text. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
320.7
GSantayana • G. Santayana
2 April 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
3 April 1936 • Charles P. Davis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
322.16–17
something • some- / thing
8 April 1936 • Justus Buchler and Benjamin P. Schwartz • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Brooklyn College Archives. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
9 April 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 171–73. Emendations and textual notes:
324.22 325.7
that —is • [‘is’ over ‘at’] Benamy • [sic]
18 April 1936 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
325.26 325.30
best-seller • best- / seller w/What • [‘W’ over ‘w’]
5:498
The Letters of George Santayana
25 April 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 173–74. Emendations and textual notes:
326.16 326.16 326.25–26
when • [in margin] ^ ^ [illegible]you • [‘you’ over unrecovered characters] [illegible]We see • [‘We see’ over unrecovered characters]
25 April 1936 • Otto Kyllmann • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
328.9
self-consciousness • self-con- / consciousness
26 April 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
329.11
were —as • [‘as’ over ‘ere’]
[Early May 1936] • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
[c. May or June 1936] • The Class of 1886 • [Rome, Italy]
Copy-text: MS unlocated. Published version is copy-text. Previous publication: Letters, 311–12. Emendations and textual notes:
330.6
non-existent • non- / existent
1 May 1936 • To Robert Steed Dunn • Rome, Italy[ep
Copy-text: MS unlocated. Photocopy of page from And Least Love, an unpublished book of Dunn’s poetry, in the collection of Jack Benedict, Seattle, Washington, is copy-text. Previous publication: the letter serves as a forward to And Least Love. The title page of the work reads “Katonah—New York / 1945 / (This book is not published).” A page listing Dunn’s other books which “are out of print” cites The Southworth-Anthoensen Press, Portland, Maine. Emendations and textual notes:
331.22
GSantayana • G. Santayana.
Textual Notes
5:499
3 May 1936 • Robert Shaw Barlow • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: Letters, 309–10. Emendations and textual notes:
332.9 332.14 333.2
that • [sic] anything • any- / thing long-winded • long- / winded
5 May 1936 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
333.16 333.18 333.21–22 333.25 334.23 334.32
Book-of-the-Month • Book-of-the- / Month half-year • half- / year Book-of-the Month • [sic] Book-of-the-Month • Book-of-the- / Month withdraw • with- / draw o/for • [‘f’ over ‘o’]
9 May 1936 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
335.11
[illegible]published • [‘p’ over unrecovered character]
15 May 1936 • Charles Scribner’s Sons • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: Radiogram, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
18 May 1936 • Miriam Thayer Richards • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: Letters, 310–11. Emendations and textual notes:
336.8 336.27–28 337.2
childhood • child- / hood household • house- / hold of for • [‘for’ over ‘of’] —
5:500
The Letters of George Santayana
19 May 1936 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
337.15–16 337.24 338.10
st
June 31– • [sic] Cambridge This • [sic] sitting-room • sitting- / room
22 May 1936 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
26 May 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
339.13
tomorrow • to- / morrow
26 May 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
340.20
commonplace • common- / place
27 May 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
341.6
in/ t • [‘t’ over ‘n’]
28 May 1936 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
341.18 342.2 342.13
Savoy-Hotel • Savoy- / Hotel too —he^re^ • [‘he’ over ‘oo’] de/ u • [‘u’ over ‘e’]
Textual Notes
5:501
4 June 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Paris, France
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
342.23 342.25 and 31 342.33 343.5 343.6 343.7 343.37
belonging • [sic] Anderson • [sic] Waterhouse • Water- / house photograph • photo- / graph F/ from • [‘f’ over ‘F’] earler —ier • [‘ier’ over ‘er’] Theee • [sic]
5 June 1936 • George Sturgis • Paris, France
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
345.6 345.22 345.25
breakfast • break- / fast Longwood,/— • [‘—’ over ‘,’] years • [sic]
9 June 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Paris, France
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
16 June 1936 • John G. Moore • Paris, France
Copy-text: MS, Rare Books Room, The Pennsylvania State University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
347.16
something • some- / thing
21 June 1936 • George Sturgis • Paris, France
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
21 June 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Paris, France
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
5:502
The Letters of George Santayana
22 June 1936 • Robert Shaw Barlow • Paris, France
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: Letters, 312–13. Emendations and textual notes:
350.6 350.9 350.9
corncob • corn- / cob [illegible] • [unrecovered word cancelled by Santayana] lik/ fe-like • [‘f’ over ‘k’]
23 June 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Paris, France
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
351.16
understand • under- / stand
28 June 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Paris, France
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
352.19 and 353.1 Anderson • [sic] 353.14 photographs • photo- / graphs
1 July 1936 • Justus Buchler • Paris, France
Copy-text: MS, Brooklyn College Archives. Previous publication: Buchler, “One Santayana or Two?”, Journal of Philosophy 51 (21 Jan 1945): 55–56, excerpt. Emendations and textual notes:
354.6 354.15 354.21 354.27
[illegible]touches • [‘to’ over unrecovered characters] pro’s and con’s • [sic] haphazard • hap- / hazard man far • [‘far’ over ‘man’] —
6 July 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Paris, France
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
355.14
handwriting • hand- / writing
9 July 1936 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Paris, France
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
Textual Notes
5:503
17 July 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Paris, France
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
357.15
[illegible]glories • [‘glories’ over unrecovered characters]
23 July 1936 • George Sturgis • Paris, France
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
358.24
France Spain and • France / Spain and [sic]
31 July 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Paris, France
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
359.13 359.23 359.28 360.4 360.7 360.30 360.30 360.38 361.10
Shakespear • [sic] it Or • it / Or [sic] man Otherwise • man / Otherwise [sic] Anderson • [sic] Herie —y • [‘y’ over ‘ie’] [sic] sh c/ hould • [‘sh’ over ‘c’] ^ ^ October1–st I • [sic] derided by my • derided by / by my Postcript • [sic]
11 August 1936 • David J. Dowd Jr. • Paris, France
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
362.13 362.35
there was danger • there was / was danger people as not • [sic]
12 August 1936 • George Sturgis • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
364.3 364.7
Bolchevik • [sic] Nobody • No- / body
5:504
The Letters of George Santayana
14 August 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
16 August 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
17 August 1936 • George Sturgis • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
367.7 367.18
outhardly • [‘hardly’ over ‘about’] ab— — conscience’ sake • [sic]
17 August 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
21 August 1936 • Benjamin De Casseres • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS unlocated, formerly at the Brooklyn Public Library but recently sold at auction to a private individual. Photocopy from the library is copy-text. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
21 August 1936 • Constable and Co. Ltd. • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
21 August 1936 • Milton Karl Munitz • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, last known in possession of recipient. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
369.23 369.29 and 370.1 370.5 370.25 370.30
Buddhas • [sic] of in • [‘in’ over ‘of’] — periods,/ (obvious • [‘(’ over ‘,’] it between • [‘be’ over ‘it’] — ultra-human • ultra- / human
Textual Notes 26
5:505
August 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 175. Emendations and textual notes:
371.8 371.9 371.12 372.1
2 a.m, • [sic] shrie —eik • [‘ei’ over ‘ie’] [sic] bear —arefoot • [‘are’ over ‘ear’] Aug. 1st I • [sic]
26 August 1936 • Charles Augustus Strong • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
372.24 372.24
“bath-chair” • “bath- / chair”
/tdo • [‘d’ over ‘t’]
28 August 1936 • Otto Kyllmann • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, Special Collections, Temple University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
373.9
schoolbook • school- / book
31 August 1936 • George Sturgis • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
374.6 374.7
parlaiment • [sic] well-informed • well- / informed
6 September 1936 • Charles P. Davis • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
375.12 375.30–31
Parlaimentary • [sic] well-informed • well- / informed
11 September 1936 • George Sturgis • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
377.13
understand • under- / stand
5:506
The Letters of George Santayana
13 September 1936 • Llewelyn Powys • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
378.17
“Repulsion, hatred, opposition—“Room • [sic]
16 September 1936 • Robert Shaw Barlow • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
16 September 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 176–77. Emendations and textual notes:
380.34–381.1 381.1
six week • [sic] airplane • air- / plane
19 September 1936 • George Sturgis • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
381.14
post-office • post- / office
20 September 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland Copy-text: MS unlocated. William G. Holzberger’s typed transcription of the handwritten copy made by Mrs. Margot Cory is copy-text. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
20 September 1936 • Horace Meyer Kallen • Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
Copy-text: MS, YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York City. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
383.9
However • How- / ever
Textual Notes
5:507
22 September 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
383.17
bookcases • book- / cases
23 September 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
384.16 384.19 384.22
th October 15– If • [sic ] [illegible]by • [‘by’ over unrecovered characters] please not to • [sic]
26 September 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 177, excerpt. Emendations and textual notes: none.
27 September 1936 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
386.3–4 386.4
St.-Jean-de-Luz • [sic] six week of terror • [sic ]
1 October 1936 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
5 October 1936 • Benjamin P. Schwartz • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
388.12
wok / rk • [‘r’ over ‘k’]
8 October 1936 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
5:508
The Letters of George Santayana
10 October 1936 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
390.24 391.2
Marejon • [sic] “Sanatorio […] Madrid. • [sic]
11 October 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 177–78. Emendations and textual notes:
392.8 392.8
Murchie’s • [sic] st 21– The • [sic]
13 October 1936 • Charles Scribner’s Sons • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: Telegram, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
13 October 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
393.31 394.7
birthplace • birth- / place something • some- / thing
19 October 1936 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
25 October 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
396.14
parlaimentarism • [sic]
28 October 1936 • Andrew Joseph Onderdonk • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
397.19
repell • [sic]
Textual Notes
5:509
30 October 1936 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
1 November 1936 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
399.24 399.30
has/ve • [‘ve’ over ‘s’] Murchie’s • [sic]
2 November 1936 • Victor Francis Calverton • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Victor Francis Calverton Papers, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
400.7 400.15 400.23
a/ I • [‘I’ over ‘a’] Treitschky • [sic] Lao Tse • [sic]
3 November 1936 • Robert Shaw Barlow • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers (bMS Am 1542), by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: Letters, 314–15. Emendations and textual notes:
401.10 402.2
[illegible]side • [‘side’ over unrecovered characters] Your ever • [sic]
5 November 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
402.9 402.18
photograph • photo- / graph have —d • [‘d’ over ‘ve’]
12 November 1936 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
403.15 403.16
philosophise • [sic] Nevertheless • Never- / theless
5:510
The Letters of George Santayana
15 November 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
404.1
asciuta • [sic]
21 November 1936 • Christopher George Janus • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
25 November 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 178–80. Emendations and textual notes:
405.16
Anderson’s • [sic]
25 November 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
407.6 407.12 407.25
than of • [sic] ‘independent on” • [sic] Anderson • [sic]
28 November 1936 • Max Forrester Eastman • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Eastman Manuscripts, Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
408.9 408.15 408.18
understand • under- / stand the/is • [‘is’ over ‘e’] be is ing • [‘be’ in margin and ‘ing over ‘is’] ^ ^—
28 November 1936 • Morton Dauwen Zabel • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, The Newberry Library, Chicago. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
29 November 1936 • C. D. Abbott • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, cited with the permission of The Poetry/Rare Books Collection, University Libraries, State University of New York at Buffalo. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
Textual Notes
5:511
29 November 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
410.13 410.15 410.19
Benamy • [sic] st Feb. 1– In • [sic ] it him • [‘him’ over ‘it’] —
30 November 1936 • Benjamin P. Schwartz • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
411.9
without • with- / out
4 Decmber 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
412.6
send /t • [‘t’ over ‘d’]
10 December 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
412.25
one-faced • one- / faced
12 December 1936 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
12 December 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
13 December 1936 • George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
415.23
the /at • [‘at’ over ‘e’]
5:512 415.30 415.30
The Letters of George Santayana or a /rfor a round • [‘f’ over ‘r’] [sic] it, this, • [‘this’ over ‘it,’] —
14 December 1936 • Laetitia Bolton • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
416.8–9 416.9 416.15 416.16
correction —ve • [‘ve’ over ‘on’] of to • [‘to’ over ‘of’] — everlastingly • ever- / lastingly Everything • Every- / thing
14 December 1936 • Bonamy Dobrée • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, The Brotherton Collection, Leeds University Library. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes: none.
15 December 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
417.24 418.9 418.19 418.20
proof-reading • proof- / reading sub-title • sub- / title school-master’s • school- / master’s clergyman’s • clergy- / man’s
16 December 1936 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
419.9 419.11 419.19 419.20 419.21
in I • [‘I’ over ‘in’] — hea/ re • [‘r’ over ‘a’] Head-ache • Head- / ache however • how- / ever sense-datum • sense- / datum
18 December 1936 • Cyril Coniston Clemens • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Cyril C. Clemens Papers, Special Collections Library, Duke University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
420.9 420.14 420.16 420.17 420.21
to humorous • [sic] Quarterley • [sic] years of • [sic] well known • [sic] in of • [‘of’ over ‘in’] —
Textual Notes
5:513
23 December 1936 • Charles Augustus Strong • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Box 7, Folder 106, The Papers of Charles Augustus Strong, Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
421.13
re-read • re- / read
26 December 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: Years, 180. Emendations and textual notes: none.
27 December 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
423.5
wood-fire in • wood- / fire in
28 December 1936 • Rosamond and George Sturgis • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Sturgis Family Papers, by permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University. Previous publication: Letters, 315–16. Emendations and textual notes:
424.8
the/is • [‘is’ over ‘e’]
28 December 1936 • John Hall Wheelock • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS, Author Files I, Box 130 of the Scribner Archives, Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
425.7 425.9 425.23
(and • [‘(’ over ‘,’] undergraduate • under- / graduate However • How- / ever
/,
29 December 1936 • Daniel MacGhie Cory • Rome, Italy
Copy-text: MS postcard, George Santayana Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Previous publication: none known. Emendations and textual notes:
426.2 426.7
autograph-snatcher’s • auto- / graph-snatcher’s understands • under- / stands
Report of Line-End Hyphenation In quotations from the present Critical Edition, no line-end hyphens are to be retained except the following.
14.10–11
scrap-heap
265.21–22
purse-strings
14.26–27
life-time
266.2–3
ear-mark
26.17–18
ultra-human
284.31–32
life-time
41.4–5
half-year
309.1–2
well-rounded
43.4–5
lecture-room
316.20–21
bad-tempered
57.19–20
after-taste
333.21–22
Book-of-the Month [sic ]
74.20–21
time-limit
350.20–21
image-without-thought
76.13–14
well-known
353.9–10
Ah´-Vila
112.7–8
note-books
375.30–31
well-informed
113.7–8
sub-sounds
376.2–3
step-son
114.23–24
pied-à-terre
380.16–17
re-reading
118.19–20
anti-Fascist
381.23–24
Hispano-Americano
119.4–5
re-copied
384.8–9
St.-Jean-de-Luz [sic ]
162.7–8
re-read
392.5–6
Re-Collections
167.26–168.1
self-delimited
399.7–8
Book-of-the-Month
177.26–27
sitting-room
399.13–14
Book-of-the-Month
215.7–8
starting-point
399.17–18
Book-of-the-Month
229.12–13
post-poned
401.16–17
turning-point
237.16–17
Book-of-the-Month
419.15–16
“sense-datum”
248.27–28
get-old-quick
423.5–6
wood-fire
250.4–5
Book-of-the-Month
425.21–22
re-focussed
264.17–18
neo-realism
Chronology William G. Holzberger This chronology is based upon various sources of information about Santayana’s life and work, including his autobiography, entitled Persons and Places: Fragments of Autobiography, originally published in three volumes as Persons and Places, The Middle Span, and My Host the World (in 1944, 1945, and 1953 respectively); his letters; the biography by Daniel Cory, entitled Santayana: The Later Years; and my conversations with Cory. It is also indebted, however, for its dating of Santayana’s transatlantic journeys and other travels, to a large printed map of Europe sent to me by Santayana’s grandnephew, Don Eduardo Sastre Martín, on which, in the early years of the twentieth century, Santayana carefully inscribed, in red ink, the dates of his voyages, the names of the transatlantic steamships on which he traveled, and the routes that he followed. 1847 or 1848 Agustín Ruiz de Santayana (c. 1814–93), George Santayana’s father, is appointed Governor of Batang in the Philippines. 1849 On 22 August Josefina Borrás (c. 1826–1912), George Santayana’s mother, marries George Sturgis (1817–57) of Boston, aboard a British warship at anchor in Manila Bay. They have five children, but only three survive to adulthood (Susan Parkman, 5 June 1851; Josephine Borrás, in 1853; and Robert Shaw, in 1854). The other two ( Joseph Borrás, who was called Pepín, born in 1850, and James Victor, in 1856) die in infancy. 1856 Josefina and George Sturgis, with their surviving children, visit America. They sail from Manila to Boston aboard the Fearless, a journey of ninety days. Agustín Santayana is also aboard, on leave from his post at Batang and bound for Spain via America and England. 1857 George Sturgis dies in Manila at the age of forty. His brother, Robert Sturgis, gives Josefina ten thousand dollars.
518
Editorial Appendix
1858 Josefina Sturgis sails for Boston from Manila. Her youngest child, James Victor, aged one year and seven months, dies on the journey, in London. Josefina and her three surviving children remain in Boston for three years. 1861 or 1862 Josefina and her children return to Spain. They live in Madrid with the parents and family of Mercedes de la Escalera y Iparraguirre. 1862 In Madrid Josefina Borrás Sturgis marries Agustín Santayana (whom she had known during their years in the Philippines). 1863 On 16 December, at No. 69, Calle Ancha de San Bernardo, Madrid, George Santayana is born. (He retains his Spanish citizenship throughout his life.) 1864 Santayana is christened Jorge Agustín Nicolás, on 1 January, in the parish church of San Marcos, Madrid. The first name is given by the godmother, his twelve-year-old half sister, Susan (Susana), who chooses the first name of her own father, George Sturgis. 1866 Santayana’s parents and the four children move from Madrid to Ávila. Afterwards, Santayana’s half brother, Robert, is sent to live in Boston. 1868 or 1869 Santayana’s mother, with Susan and Josephine, leaves Ávila for Boston, in obedience to her first husband’s wish that his children be brought up in America. George Santayana, age five, is left with his father in Spain. 1872 In his ninth year, Santayana and his father leave Spain in June, bound for America, where the boy is to be raised and educated. They sail from Liverpool on 4 July on the Cunard steamer Samaria. Santayana’s first American residence is his mother’s house at No. 302 Beacon Street, where his father remained for several months before returning permanently to Ávila. Santayana attends his first American school, Miss Welchman’s Kindergarten on Chestnut Street. 1873–74 During the winter of 1873–74, Santayana is at the Brimmer School, the public grammar school of the district. In the autumn of 1874, he transfers to the Boston Public Latin School, where he spends eight school years.
Chronology
519
1876 Santayana travels to Philadelphia with his half brother, Robert, to see the Centennial Exhibition. 1880 In June Santayana, age sixteen, is awarded the Poetry Prize at the Boston Latin School for his poem “Day and Night.” He regards the event as his “emergence into public notice.” During the ’80s Santayana regularly attends mass at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Boston. 1881–82 Santayana’s senior year at the Boston Latin School. He becomes founding editor of the Latin School Register, the student paper, in which he anonymously publishes poems. In the autumn of 1882, he matriculates at Harvard College. Throughout his undergraduate years, he lives in room No. 19, Hollis Hall, the Harvard Yard. On weekends he visits his mother, who now lives in Roxbury, Massachusetts. During this freshman year, he discovers Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura, which he studies in Latin, but he fails algebra and does poorly in his course in Greek, taught by Louis Dyer, whose book, The Gods in Greece, is to influence him considerably. In the Greek course, he reads the Bacchae of Euripides, from which he takes his personal motto: To\ sofo\n ou) sofi/a which, in translation, becomes the second line of his famous Sonnet III: “It is not wisdom to be only wise.” He becomes cartoonist for the Harvard Lampoon. 1883–84 Santayana’s sophomore year at Harvard. In June 1883, at the age of nineteen, he makes his first return to Spain to visit his father, sailing alone from New York to Antwerp and traveling from there to Ávila by train. He also visits relatives in Catalonia, where, at Tarragona, he contracts a mild case of smallpox. Nevertheless, he manages to see a number of major Spanish cities and also visits Lyons and Paris. Returning to America in October, from Antwerp, he resumes his studies at Harvard. At first he is advised by a skeptical William James against going in for philosophy. At the Church of the Immaculate Conception, he meets Ward Thoron, who becomes his closest friend during their undergraduate years. 1884–85 Santayana’s junior year at Harvard. He is initiated into two undergraduate societies, the O.K. (on 22 April 1885) and the Hasty Pudding. 1885 He becomes a founding member of the editorial board of The Harvard Monthly, the avant-garde college literary magazine founded by classmate Alanson Bigelow Houghton. The first issue of October 1885 carries a sonnet by Santayana, and he continues to publish poems in the Monthly until 1903.
520
Editorial Appendix
1885–86 Santayana’s senior year at Harvard. He meets Charles Augustus Strong, who had come from the University of Rochester to study philosophy for a year at Harvard. Together they found the Harvard Philosophical Club. They are awarded jointly, by the Harvard Philosophy Department, the Walker Fellowship for graduate study in Germany. The stipend of five hundred dollars is to be divided between them. The issue of The Harvard Monthly for April 1886 contains what is to be Santayana’s most anthologized poem, his Sonnet III, beginning, “O World, thou choosest not the better part!” He is introduced to John Francis Stanley, 2d Earl Russell (“Frank”), age twenty, who is visiting America after being “sent down” from Balliol College, Oxford, in May 1885 for an alleged misdemeanor. Russell, elder brother of philosopher Bertrand Russell, becomes Santayana’s most admired friend and the model for Jim Darnley of Santayana’s novel, The Last Puritan (1935). Santayana’s Bachelor of Arts degree is awarded summa cum laude and in absentia, Santayana having sailed for Cherbourg after taking his last examination. In July 1886 he returns for the second time to Ávila, where he spends the summer with his father. In mid-August he is at Göttingen, Germany, and later that autumn (September) spends four to six weeks at Dresden. He also journeys to London, visiting that city for the first time, in company with Strong. They sail from the port of Bremen in northern Germany. In October 1886 Santayana is in Berlin for the start of the winter semester. 1887 In late March (at the close of the winter semester at Berlin) Santayana and Strong travel to England for a holiday. Santayana spends two days with Earl Russell aboard the latter’s steam yacht Royal, sailing down the Thames from Reading to London. In April Santayana first visits Oxford, where, through Earl Russell, he meets poet Lionel Johnson, then a student at New College. On 18 June Santayana is in London. He visits Winchester, Russell’s school, in company with the young nobleman. On 20 June he views the procession for Queen Victoria’s Jubilee (the fiftieth anniversary of her reign) from a room in Buckingham Palace Road engaged for the occasion by John D. Rockefeller. The company includes Rockefeller’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth (“Bessie”), and Charles Augustus Strong, to whom she had become engaged that spring. During the summer, Santayana makes his third return to Spain. He is in Ávila in July and August. On 2 September he takes a ship from Malaga to meet his sister, Susana, on Gibraltar for a few weeks to tour southern Spain before returning to Germany. From that autumn until the following spring, Santayana continues his graduate studies at Berlin. (His December address in Berlin is Pottsdamerstrasse 123III.) The current German psycho-physiological approach to the study of philosophy is uncongenial to Santayana; also he is apprehen-
Chronology
521
sive about writing a doctoral dissertation in German. He decides to return to Harvard to complete his doctoral program. 1888 He joins Earl Russell at Valence, France, on 2 June for a seventeen-day canal journey through Burgundy aboard the Royal. On 18 June they reach Paris, where Santayana leaves Russell. In August, following his summer stay in Ávila, he visits Russell at his house, Broom Hall, situated at Teddington. After over two years abroad, Santayana returns to America, sailing from Liverpool to Boston on the Catalonia. Josiah Royce rejects the suggestion of Schopenhauer as the subject of Santayana’s dissertation, recommending Lotze instead. Until the following autumn (1889), Santayana lives with his mother in her house in Roxbury, Massachusetts, working on his doctoral dissertation. 1889 Santayana completes his dissertation on Lotze’s System of Philosophy and is awarded Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy degrees by Harvard University. During the summer he stays with Julian Codman and his family at Cotuit, on Cape Cod, where he meets the novelist Howard Sturgis, cousin to his relations. That autumn, at the rank of instructor in philosophy, he begins his twenty-two-year teaching career at Harvard. During the academic year 1889–90, Santayana lives in rooms in Thayer Hall in the Harvard Yard. He becomes an honorary member of several college clubs, including the Delta Phi or “Gas House” (later the Delphic), the Zeta Psi (called “The Spee”), and the Signet Society. He meets Henry Adams at the historian’s home in Washington, D.C., where he is taken by Ward Thoron. 1890 In June Santayana sails from New York for Liverpool. During the summer he first visits Queen’s Acre, novelist Howard Sturgis’s home near Windsor Park, England, which he is to visit almost yearly until Sturgis’s death in 1920. He spends part of July and August in Ávila. Sailing from Liverpool on 3 September on the Teutonic, Santayana returns to America and moves into rooms at No. 7, Stoughton Hall, the Harvard Yard, where he will spend six winters. About this time he begins his “Poetry Bees”: regular meetings held in his rooms with a group of student friends for the purpose of reading aloud from the celebrated poets. This practice is continued for several years before being discontinued and is revived in 1910–11, with Conrad Aiken as the leading light among the student members. Also, at about this time, Santayana, William Vaughn Moody, Norman Hapgood, Boylston Beal, and others, as a lark, found the Laodicean Club at Harvard, and Santayana is elected “Pope” by the membership.
522
Editorial Appendix
1891 Santayana sails from Boston to Liverpool in June aboard the Cephalonia. He makes his first visit to Telegraph House (or “T.H.”), Earl Russell’s estate on the South Downs in Hampshire, England, where Santayana is to be a regular visitor until 1923. He visits Ávila in August and returns to Boston in September. 1892 Santayana spends the summer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the autumn he makes his first visit to Yale, where he is invited by William Lyon Phelps to watch the Harvard-Yale football game. Santayana is writing “nothing but poetry” at this time. On 26 November his half sister, Susana, then forty-one, marries Celedonio Sastre of Ávila, a widower with six children. On 16 December, Santayana’s twenty-ninth birthday, he gives a dinner party for a group of Harvard friends: “one of the pleasantest memories of my life.”1 1893 On 10 June Santayana sails from New York for Gibraltar on the Fulda.2 Crossing to Tangiers, he meets the American painter John Singer Sargent on board ship. During the summer, he is in Ávila, where he witnesses his father’s death at seventy-nine. He leaves Ávila on 22 August for London and returns to New York, sailing from Southampton on 3 September. He spends two weeks with Strong in New York on his arrival. Back in Cambridge in October, he learns of the death of the closest of his younger friends, Warwick Potter (who had graduated from Harvard that spring), from cholera in the harbor of Brest during a voyage aboard a friend’s yacht. The body is returned to New York, where Santayana attends the funeral. He writes the four “To W. P.” sonnets. About this time he is approached by Herbert S. Stone and Hannibal Ingalls Kimball, young Harvard men who offer to publish a collection of his poems. He also attends the New York wedding of Robert Burnside Potter, Warwick’s elder brother. At the end of this year Santayana undergoes his metanoia, or fundamental change of heart, resulting in a renunciation of the world. This is brought about by a combination of disconcerting events, including Susana’s marriage, his father’s pathetic death, Warwick Potter’s death, the end of youth (signaled by his thirtieth birthday), and the prospect of an undistinguished career and life in Protestant America. 1894 Santayana remains in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the summer. Earl Russell, en route to San Francisco, spends a week with him in Cambridge. Santayana’s first book, Sonnets and Other Verses, is published by Stone and Kimball in Cambridge and Chicago.
Chronology
523
1895 In Cambridge, Massachusetts, until June, Santayana again sails from New York to Gibraltar on the Werra. During the summer, he visits Earl Russell at his “ugly villa” at Maidenhead, England, and meets Mrs. Marion Sommerville, who is later to divorce her husband and become Russell’s second wife (“Countess Mollie”). During this summer, Santayana also travels in Italy with Charles Loeser and makes a one-hundred-fifty-mile walking tour through France to Switzerland with Guy Murchie. He returns to Cambridge in late September, sailing from London to New York on a cattle steamer. 1896 Santayana’s first book-length prose work is published by Scribner’s: The Sense of Beauty: Being the Outlines of Aesthetic Theory. The second edition of Sonnets, containing the thirty new sonnets of the Second Sonnet Series, also is published by Stone and Kimball in this year. Andreas Martin Andersen makes his charcoal drawing, which becomes Santayana’s favorite portrait of himself. On 28 June Santayana sails from Quebec on the Parisian, bound for Liverpool and a year’s leave of absence from Harvard. He plans to spend a year in advanced study at Cambridge University. From late July through early September, he is in Oxford. Early in October he visits Bertrand Russell at Haslemere, England; in September he begins a four-week stay in Maidenhead, England. He also appears in court in Winchester on 9 or 10 October to testify on behalf of Frank Russell, against whom charges were brought by the Earl’s estranged first wife, Mabel Edith, and her mother, Lady Lena Scott. Afterwards, Santayana goes immediately from Winchester to Cambridge, where he is admitted as an advanced student to King’s College, with the standing of Master of Arts. His Cambridge friends include Nathaniel Wedd, G. Lowes Dickinson, Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and J. M. E. McTaggart. He studies Plato under the direction of Henry Jackson of Trinity College. That December Santayana testifies on behalf of the “wicked Earl,” as Russell’s notorious courtroom adventures caused him to be designated by the journalists, at the trial of Lady Scott and her codefendants for libel, held at the Old Bailey in London. They are convicted and sentenced to eight months at hard labor, but Russell intercedes to reduce the severity of Lady Scott’s punishment. Santayana spends the Christmas holidays in Paris with club acquaintances at Harvard, who are studying at the Beaux Arts. 1897 In January Santayana returns to King’s College, Cambridge, England. He spends April and May traveling in Italy with Mr. and Mrs. Robert Burnside Potter, visiting Florence, Venice, and Rome. On 22 June, in company with the Rockefellers (as in 1887), Santayana views Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee procession (the sixtieth anniversary of her reign) from a room in Picadilly
524
Editorial Appendix
taken by John D. Rockefeller for the occasion. During the summer Santayana sees Lionel Johnson again, in Earl Russell’s London rooms in Temple Gardens. His study at King’s College is finished during July and August, and, after fifteen months abroad, he returns on 2 September 1897 to Boston from Liverpool in the Gallia. He resumes his teaching duties at Harvard and lives with his mother in her house in Longwood, Brookline, Massachusetts, walking to classes. 1898 Despite Harvard President Charles William Eliot’s disapproval, early in the year Santayana is promoted from instructor to assistant professor for a five-year period at an annual salary of two thousand dollars. The promotion is endorsed by William James, Hugo Münsterberg, and Santayana’s other colleagues in the philosophy department. He takes up permanent residence on Brattle Street in Cambridge to “do one’s share in maintaining or establishing the academic traditions of the place.”3 In June he sails to England for his summer holiday abroad, but he is dismayed by the ignominious defeat of the Spanish fleet at Manila Harbor and Santiago in the Spanish-American War. He returns in September, sailing from Liverpool to New York. 1899 Santayana’s Lucifer, a mythological tragedy, is published in Chicago and New York by H. S. Stone. Santayana sails from New York to Southampton in June and spends the summer at Oxford completing work on the manuscript of Interpretations of Poetry and Religion. He visits the Robert B. Potters at Sainte Marguerite and then spends two weeks with Susana and her family in Ávila before sailing to Quebec from Liverpool in September. 1900 Santayana spends the summer abroad, sailing in June from New York to London. He visits a number of cities in France, including Chartres, Orleans, and Toulouse, and then settles in Oxford for most of the time. Returning to America from Southampton in September, he moves into rooms at No. 60, Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he continues to live until mid1904. He meets Baron Albert von Westenholz (“one of my truest friends” [Persons, 261]) when the young German aristocrat appears at Harvard. Interpretations is published by Scribner’s in New York and A. & C. Black in London. 1901 The last collection of new poems by Santayana, A Hermit of Carmel and Other Poems, is published in New York by Scribner’s (and in London by R. B. Johnson in 1902). Henceforth, Santayana writes little poetry, concentrating
Chronology
525
instead on philosophy. He spends the summer abroad, sailing for England in July and returning in September. 1902 Santayana again spends the summer abroad, sailing in June from New York to Southampton and returning from London in September. 1903 Santayana is reappointed assistant professor for a second five-year period, at the same annual salary of two thousand dollars. Again the summer is spent abroad, with Santayana sailing from New York to Southampton in June. In mid-August he leaves Oxford for Portsmouth, to visit Earl Russell. He returns to Cambridge, Massachusetts, from Hamburg in September. 1904–6 Santayana spends twenty-seven months abroad, including his only sabbatical leave (1904–5), traveling in Europe and the Middle East. In mid-July 1904 he sails from New York to Plymouth, England. That September, he sends the last batch of manuscript for The Life of Reason to the publishers and then sets out from Paris for his “first real travels.” He visits Rome and Venice with Charles Loeser. After spending a few weeks at Naples in December, he visits Pompeii; then he goes on to Sicily, where, at Syracuse, he reads the first proofs of The Life of Reason. He returns from Sicily to Naples and sails for Greece. He is in Egypt in January 1905 and travels by boat up and down the Nile. From Egypt he travels to Palestine and Tel Aviv, spending three weeks at Jerusalem. He visits Damascus and Baalbeck, then travels from Beirut to Athens and through Greece, which, in its modern form, disappoints him. He sails from Piraeus to Constantinople, concluding his odyssey with Budapest and Vienna. Never again will he travel “for the sake of travelling.” (Persons, 467) While still in the East in 1905, Santayana is invited by Harvard to become Hyde Lecturer at the Sorbonne for 1905–6; he accepts, thus extending his holiday for a second year. During this period he lectures on philosophical subjects at Paris and the provincial universities. The five volumes of The Life of Reason; or, the Phases of Human Progress are published during 1905–6 by Scribner’s in New York and Constable in London. Santayana rejects an offer of a position on the philosophical faculty of Columbia University. He returns to America in September 1906, sailing from Southampton to New York, and resumes his teaching duties at Harvard. 1907 Santayana is promoted from assistant professor to full professor, and his salary is doubled to four thousand dollars per year. In June he sails from New York to Hamburg and returns to Boston from Liverpool in September.
526
Editorial Appendix
1908 Santayana sails from Boston to Plymouth in June and spends time in England and France before returning to Boston from Cherbourg in September. 1909 Santayana is elected to membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters (later the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters). He spends the summer in Europe, sailing in July, from Boston to Liverpool, on the Lusitania, and returning from Liverpool in September aboard the Mauretania. 1910 In February Santayana delivers a course of lectures, on “Three Philosophical Poets,” at Columbia University. On 13 April he addresses the Century Club in Chicago, and from 14 April to about 24 April he repeats his course of six lectures on the “Three Philosophical Poets” at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. These lectures constitute the book Three Philosophical Poets: Lucretius, Dante, and Goethe published later in the year by Harvard University Press, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and by the Oxford University Press, in London. Santayana sails from Boston to Liverpool aboard the Lusitania in June, and he makes his penultimate transatlantic crossing in September, sailing from Hamburg on the Kaiserin Augusta Victoria. 1911 In April Santayana delivers his final lecture at Harvard. He receives an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from the University of Wisconsin. From Madison, he travels to the University of California at Berkeley, where, beginning in June, he teaches in the six-week summer session and has his only experience of the American West. 1912 Santayana makes his final transatlantic crossing (thirty-eighth), sailing aboard the Olympic from Boston on 24 January, bound for Plymouth and a holiday in Europe. He plans to return to Harvard in September 1913, but in fact he has left America for good. On 5 February Santayana’s mother dies. His share of the inheritance, coupled with his savings, enables him to resign his professorship, which he does with a letter to Harvard President Abbott Lawrence Lowell of 6 June. In February he visits Cambridge University, where, as Bertrand Russell’s guest, he sleeps in the clock tower of Trinity College. During the spring he lives in Spain with Mercedes de la Escalera (an old family friend) in her home in Madrid. At this time, Santayana’s bronchitis becomes chronic, and he suffers from it periodically during the rest of his life. In May he moves into C. A. Strong’s Paris apartment at No. 9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, which, until his settlement in Rome in 1928, becomes his prin-
Chronology
527
cipal residence. At this time, his sister Josephine Sturgis is taken by her brother Robert to Spain, where she will remain permanently. 1913–14 Winds of Doctrine: Studies in Contemporary Opinion is published by Scribner’s in New York and Dent in London. Santayana is in Ávila during December 1913 and spends the period January through May 1914 in Seville. He is back at Strong’s Paris apartment in June. In July Santayana crosses the English Channel “to do some shopping, and see a few friends,”4 travels to London, and early in August, to Cambridge. World War I breaks out, and Santayana returns to Oxford, where he remains essentially throughout the war, until the end of April 1919. During this period he often visits Earl Russell at Telegraph House. At Oxford Santayana also becomes friends with Robert Bridges, the poet laureate, and, through Bertrand Russell, with Lady Ottoline Morrell, whose Manor House at Garsington (near Oxford) is at this time a gathering place for the British literati. 1915 The controversial Egotism in German Philosophy is published by Scribner’s in New York (and, in 1916, by Dent in London). Santayana is accused by his critics of writing propaganda. 1918 During the winter Santayana gives the Third Annual Henriette Hertz Lecture, before the British Academy in London. The lecture is published as “Philosophical Opinion in America,” in the Proceedings of the British Academy for 1917–18, and later appears, in 1920, as chapter five of Character and Opinion in the United States. 1919 Robert Bridges tries unsuccessfully to persuade Santayana to remain in England. He wishes to arrange a lifetime membership for him in one of the Oxford colleges with which Bridges is affiliated, Corpus Christi or New College. Santayana is still considering a permanent residency in Oxford, but wants to travel for at least a year. At the end of June, after considerable difficulties obtaining a French visa, Santayana returns to Strong’s Paris apartment to write. He declines an offer from Professor Wendell T. Bush to lecture at Columbia. In late November he accompanies a crippled Strong to his Villa Le Balze at Fiesole near Florence. 1920 During this year Santayana begins his practice of passing the winters in Rome, but continues to spend the summers in Paris, Ávila, Glion, at Lake Geneva, or Cortina d’Ampezzo. Little Essays: Drawn From the Writings of George
528
Editorial Appendix
Santayana by Logan Pearsall Smith, With the Collaboration of the Author is published by Constable in London and Scribner’s in New York. Character and Opinion in the United States: with Reminiscences of William James, and Josiah Royce, and Academic Life in America is published by Constable in London, Scribner’s in New York, and McLeod in Toronto. His work continues on Soliloquies and Realms of Being. 1921 Santayana spends the winter months in Spain (Toledo and Madrid) concentrating on his writing. Several of the English soliloquies are published separately in the The Dial, the The Athenaeum, and the Journal of Philosophy. At the end of March he returns to Paris, and in October he travels to Rome. 1922 After a winter in Rome organizing the Realms of Being, Santayana spends the summer in Paris working on the manuscript of Scepticism and Animal Faith. Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies and the revised second edition of the five volumes of The Life of Reason are published by Constable and Scribner’s (Life of Reason by Constable in 1923). 1923 The introduction to Santayana’s system of philosophy, Scepticism and Animal Faith, and the last collection of Santayana’s poetry to appear during his lifetime, Poems: Selected by the Author and Revised, are published by Scribner’s and Constable. Santayana has by now changed his mind about retiring permanently in England, partly because of the winter climate and partly because of his dissatisfaction with the current tone of life there. On his penultimate visit to England, Santayana delivers the Herbert Spencer Lecture at Oxford (entitled The Unknowable and published by the Clarendon Press). He makes final visits to Cambridge and to “T.H.,” where Earl Russell is now alone, his third wife, the novelist “Elizabeth” (Mary Annette Beauchamp, widow of the German Count von Arnim) having left him in 1918. 1924 Santayana declines Professor George Herbert Palmer’s invitation to read the Phi Beta Kappa poem at the Harvard Commencement exercises. A revised version of his tragedy (originally published in 1900) is published as Lucifer; or the Heavenly Truce: A Theological Tragedy, by Dunster House, at Cambridge, Massachusetts. 1925 Dialogues in Limbo is published by Constable in London (and by Scribner’s in New York in 1926).
Chronology
529
1926 Santayana writes a short preface to the 1926 reprint of Winds of Doctrine (New York: Scribner’s; London: Dent). During the summer, in a room in the Hotel Cristallo, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, he composes, “at one stretch,” (Persons, 529) Platonism and the Spiritual Life. That autumn Santayana begins the annual practice of spending all or part of the months of September and October in Venice, staying at the Hotel Danieli, en route back to Rome from Cortina. 1927 Early in April Santayana meets Daniel Cory, age twenty-two, who has come from England at Santayana’s invitation to meet the philosopher in Rome. In August Santayana officiates as a “substitute papa”5 at the wedding of Margaret Strong (daughter of C. A. Strong and Elizabeth Rockefeller) to George Cuevas, in Paris, by giving the bride away. The first volume of Santayana’s system of philosophy, The Realm of Essence: Book First of Realms of Being, is published by Scribner’s in New York and Constable in London. 1928 Early in January Santayana declines the offer, from President Abbott Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, of the Norton Chair of Poetry for 1928–29. His half sister Susana dies in Ávila, on 10 February, in her seventy-seventh year. At the end of August Strong gives up his Paris apartment, in which, for many years, Santayana has lived as Strong’s guest. Early in September Santayana makes a penultimate visit to Spain. Avoiding Ávila, he goes to Mercedes de la Escalera in Galicia to ascertain the state of mental and physical health of his sister Josephine, who is living with Mercedes, and to advise her regarding her will. About this time, at a suggestion from his nephew, George Sturgis, Santayana begins composing his autobiography. 1929 By the first of September Santayana has finished work on the manuscript of The Realm of Matter. Again settled at the Hotel Bristol in Rome, in October he begins work on The Realm of Truth. 1930 Celedonio Sastre Serrano, husband of the late Susana, dies in Ávila on 12 May. At the end of May Santayana makes his final visit to Spain in order to settle the affairs of his surviving sister, Josephine, as well as his own. He gives his father’s house in Ávila to the Sastre brothers, Celedonio’s sons. After his return to Rome, Josephine dies in Ávila, on October 15, at the age of seventy-seven. The Realm of Matter: Book Second of Realms of Being is published, by Scribner’s in New York and Constable in London, and “A Brief History of My Opinions” appears in volume two of Contemporary American Philosophy: Personal
530
Editorial Appendix
Statements, edited by George P. Adams and William P. Montague, and published by Macmillan in New York. 1931 John Francis Stanley, 2d Earl Russell, dies at Marseilles on 3 March at the age of sixty-five. Santayana reverses his intention to visit Ávila in the spring or summer, both because of disinclination and the worsening political unrest in Spain, presaging the impending civil war. The Genteel Tradition at Bay is published by Scribner’s in New York and by the Adelphi in London. In December Santayana receives and declines the offer to become William James Professor of Philosophy at Harvard. 1932 Santayana attends the philosophical congress commemorating the tercentenary of Spinoza’s birth, held at The Hague on September 6–10, where he delivers a lecture on Ultimate Religion (published in Septimana Spinozana, by Martinus Nijhoff, at The Hague, in 1933). He also goes to London, where he attends a meeting held there to commemorate the tercentenary of the birth of John Locke. On 19 October he gives an address on “Locke and the Frontiers of Common Sense,” which becomes the first of five essays constituting Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy (published in England by the Cambridge University Press and in New York by Scribner’s in 1933). 1933 Evelyn Tindall, an Englishwoman who is secretary for the British Legation to the Holy See in Rome, is first mentioned as typing Santayana’s manuscripts. Beginning with The Last Puritan, she continues her work with Santayana for almost twenty years. 1934 On 31 August Santayana completes work on his novel, The Last Puritan: A Memoir in the Form of a Novel. Begun in the early 1890s as a story of college life, the work has been in progress for more than forty years. 1935 In the spring Santayana declines the invitation of President James Bryant Conant and the Harvard Tercentenary Committee to attend the Commencement exercises in June and receive an honorary Doctor of Letters degree. He also declines the subsequent offer to receive, together with sixty other scholars, an unspecified honorary degree to be presented at Harvard during the summer. He regards these offers as merely grudging recognition of his achievement by official Harvard. The Last Puritan is published by Constable in London (on 17 October) and by Macmillan in Toronto. The
Chronology
531
Scribner’s edition, published in New York in 1936, becomes a Book-of-the-Month Club bestseller. 1936 The first six volumes of the Triton Edition of The Works of George Santayana, Scribner’s deluxe limited edition of the collected writings in fifteen volumes, are published in New York. Santayana writes a general preface and autographs sheets which are placed at the front in volume one. (The remaining nine volumes are published during the period 1937–40.) Obiter Scripta: Lectures, Essays and Reviews, edited by Justus Buchler and Benjamin Schwartz, and Philosophy of Santayana: Selections From the Works of George Santayana, edited by Irwin Edman, are published by Scribner’s (Obiter is also published by Constable). During June and July, Santayana makes a final visit to Paris. 1937 On 29 May Santayana’s favorite grandnephew, Roberto Sastre (son of José [“Pepe”] and Isabel Sastre) is killed while fighting on the Falangist side in the Spanish civil war. The Realm of Truth: Book Third of Realms of Being is published in London by Constable (and in New York by Scribner’s in 1938). 1938 The first book-length biography, George Santayana, by George Washburne Howgate is published in Philadelphia by the University of Pennsylvania Press. 1939 World War II breaks out in Europe. Santayana is refused a regular long-term visa by the Swiss officials and decides to remain in Italy. Daniel Cory stays with him at Cortina d’Ampezzo until the end of August. (Their next meeting will be at the Blue Sisters’ nursing home in Rome, early in September 1947, eight years later.) In the autumn the Hotel Bristol in Rome, Santayana’s home for many years, is closed for reconstruction. Santayana decides to spend the winter of 1939–40 in Venice, a decision that, because of the severe cold and dampness of Venice in winter, he afterward regrets. In September he learns of the suicide of his friend Baron Albert von Westenholz. 1940 On 23 January, at Florence, Charles Augustus Strong dies at the age of seventy-seven. The Realm of Spirit: Book Fourth of Realms of Being is published by Scribner’s in New York and Constable in London. The Philosophy of George Santayana, volume two of The Library of Living Philosophers, Paul Arthur Schilpp, Editor, is published in Evanston by the Northwestern University Press. The book, composed of critical essays by several hands, contains also Santayana’s rejoinder entitled “Apologia pro Mente Sua.”
532
Editorial Appendix
1941 Santayana spends the summer at Fiuggi, returning to Rome in the Autumn. The Hotel Bristol being closed, he lives for a time in the Grand Hotel. Now seventy-seven years old, he finds looking after himself more difficult and, on 14 October, moves into a nursing home operated by the Blue Sisters of the Little Company of Mary, an order of Roman Catholic Irish nuns. The large establishment is situated in the Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, atop the Celius (Monte Celio), one of Rome’s seven hills. This is to be Santayana’s last home, where he will live for almost eleven years. 1942–43 The manuscript of Persons and Places, the first volume of Santayana’s autobiography, is refused by the Italian postal authorities. Scribner’s editor John Hall Wheelock, and Irish poet Padraic Collum, with the cooperation of American and Vatican diplomatic officials, succeed in spiriting the manuscript across national lines and ultimately to New York. Cut off by the war from correspondence with America and England, Santayana continues to write his autobiography and works on the manuscript of Dominations and Powers, a book composed of essays written over a great many years. 1944 Like The Last Puritan, in 1936, Persons and Places becomes a Book-ofthe-Month Club bestseller. On 20 December George Sturgis, Santayana’s nephew and financial manager, dies of a heart attack. 1945 The second volume of Santayana’s autobiography is published as The Middle Span, the title being supplied by editor Wheelock of Scribner’s. Santayana is awarded the Nicholas Murray Butler Medal by Columbia University. 1946 The Idea of Christ in the Gospels; or, God in Man: A Critical Essay is published by Scribner’s in New York and Saunders in Toronto. 1947 Daniel Cory spends nearly two months with Santayana in Rome, living in a room opposite Santayana’s in the Blue Sisters’ establishment. He finds Santayana completely deaf in one ear. On 13 October Santayana gives Cory the manuscript of his Posthumous Poems, inscribing a personal dedication. These unpublished poems and translations, which Santayana had begun revising and transcribing at the end of the war, are published in The Poet’s Testament, in 1953, edited by Cory and John Hall Wheelock.
Chronology
533
1948 Dialogues in Limbo, With Three New Dialogues is published in New York by Scribner’s. 1949 Cory spends the months of April and May helping Santayana with his work on the manuscript of Dominations and Powers. They agree that henceforth Cory should spend the winters in Rome. Cory returns to Rome at the end of October and remains there until the end of April 1950. In December 1949 Cory consults Santayana’s physician, Dr. Luigi Sabbatucci about Santayana’s persistent cough and recent loss of appetite. He interprets the doctor’s circumspect answers as suspicion of serious illness. 1950 Artist Lino S. Lipinsky de Orlov does his series of pencil portraits of Santayana in August 1950. Cory returns to Rome from England in early October 1950 and remains there until early May the following year. He assists Santayana with the final checking and correction of the proofs of Dominations and Powers, and they complete this labor by the beginning of the New Year. In mid-October 1950 Robert Lowell and his wife, novelist Elizabeth Hardwick, visit Santayana in Rome. 1951 Dominations and Powers: Reflections on Liberty, Society, and Government, Santayana’s last book published during his lifetime, is issued by Scribner’s in New York and Constable in London. Santayana receives another visit from Robert Lowell early in the year, and Cory spends about nine months [c. September 1951–May 1952] with Santayana in Rome. They spend the autumn collaborating on the revised one-volume edition of The Life of Reason (originally published in five volumes in 1905–6, the new edition is published by Constable in London and Scribner’s in New York in 1954). Cory observes that Santayana’s deafness is increasing and that his vision, never good, is impaired by cataracts. 1952 On 4 June Santayana falls on the steps of the Spanish Consulate in Rome, where he had gone to renew his passport. He is taken to the nursing home in a taxi by officials of the Consulate. The effects of the fall include three broken ribs, a bleeding head wound, and patches of pneumonia on the lungs. Cory, hastily summoned from England by the Sisters, remains with Santayana until the end of June. Dr. Sabbatucci is amazed by Santayana’s recovery. While recuperating, Santayana receives, as a present from George Salerno (a young American journalist, who had met Santayana while a soldier in the occupation forces), a copy of the poems of Lorenzo de’ Medici. Santayana decides to
534
Editorial Appendix
spend the summer translating Lorenzo’s lengthy pastoral Ombron and Ambra, and he works at this task into the summer, until increasing blindness and illness make further labor impossible. By the third week of August, Santayana becomes desperately ill. Cory arrives in Rome on 8 September and is told by Dr. Sabbatucci that Santayana is dying of stomach cancer. On 26 September, after much suffering, Santayana dies. His wish to be buried in unconsecrated ground in a Catholic cemetery is frustrated by the lack of such a section in Rome’s Campo Verano. The Spanish officials intercede and, on 30 September Santayana’s body is interred in the Tomb of the Spaniards. At the graveside, Daniel Cory reads aloud Santayana’s poem, “The Poet’s Testament.” 1953 The third volume of Santayana’s autobiography, entitled (by the publisher) My Host the World, is published in London by the Cresset Press, and in New York by Scribner’s. The Posthumous Poems, together with two early plays, are published by Scribner’s as The Poet’s Testament: Poems and Two Plays. 1955 The Letters of George Santayana, a selection of two hundred and ninety-six letters to eighty-six recipients, edited by Daniel Cory, is published by Scribner’s.
Notes 1
Letter to Daniel Cory of 11 November 1932. On page 36 of volume 3 of Scribner’s edition of Persons and Places, entitled My Host the World (1953) (and also on the holograph manuscript itself), Santayana’s second visit to Gibraltar is described as follows “… I returned there in 1891, this time from America, and crossed to Tangiers. …” On page 37, he observes that he was again at Gibraltar “two years later.” Evidently, the date of 1891 is a slip, for on the map referred to above in the headnote to this chronology Santayana has indicated that in June of 1893, and again in June of 1895, he sailed from New York to Gibraltar, on the Fulda and the Werra, respectively. The map also indicates that in June 1891 he sailed from Boston to Liverpool aboard the Cephalonia. Santayana had left the map in Spain many years before, and therefore did not have it by him while composing his autobiography in Rome during the 1940s. 3 Letter to Guy Murchie of 17 July 1897. 4 Letter to Mary Williams Winslow of 16 August 1914. 5 Letter to Boylston Adams Beal of 21 November 1927. 2
Addresses The following list of addresses is drawn from the place and date-lines and from the contents of Santayana’s letters, from information provided in his autobiography, Persons and Places, and from other biographical sources. The list includes addresses where Santayana stayed for long and short periods, and it includes trips and visits to various places. Santayana’s habit of changing residence with the seasons, however, complicates the task of accounting for his addresses, and this list, containing estimations as well as gaps and omissions, does not pretend to be complete. It is, nevertheless, reasonably accurate, and used in conjunction with the Chronology serves to inform the reader as to where Santayana was and what he was doing at a given time. The names of clubs at which Santayana dined and from which he wrote letters, but at which he did not actually reside (e.g., the Colonial and Delta Phi Clubs in Cambridge, Massachusetts, or the National Liberal Club in London, England) are not included in this list. Indented dates indicate temporary absence from a permanent address. 1863–66 69 Calle Ancha de San Bernardo, Madrid, Spain 1866–72 ( June) Ávila, Spain (father’s house) 1872
(15 July)–1881–82 (Winter) 302 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts (mother’s house)
1881–82 (Winter)–1882 (September) 26 Millmont Street, Roxbury, Massachusetts (mother’s house) 1882
(September)–1886 (May) Room no. 19, Hollis Hall, Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1883 ( June–September) Visit to Spain; trips to Lyons and Paris, France
1886–1912 Spends each summer in Europe 1886
( July–early August) Ávila (father’s house)
536
Editorial Appendix
(early August) Visits to Paris and Cologne en route to Göttingen, Germany (12 August to end of August) c/o Fräulein Schlote, 16 D Obere Karspüle, Göttingen (September) c/o Frau Sturm, Werder Strasse 6, Dresden, Germany (Autumn 1886) Visit to London 1886
(October)–1887 (February) Schiffbauerdamm, 3II, Berlin, Germany
1887
(late March) Two-day boat trip down Thames, from Reading to London, visits to Windsor, Eton, and Winchester, England (21 April–May) Oxford, England ( June) 87 Jermyn Street, St. James, London, England ( July–August) Ávila (father’s house) (early September) Trip to Gibraltar and tour of southern Spain
1887
(1 November)–1888 (mid-March) Potsdamerstrasse 123III, Berlin
1888
( June) Canal journey through Burgundy, visit to Paris ( July–August) Ávila (father’s house)
1888
(August)–1889 (August) 26 Millmont Street, Roxbury, Massachusetts (mother’s house)
1889
(September)–1890 (Spring) Room no. 29, Thayer Hall, Harvard Yard
1890
(Summer) Visit to Queen’s Acre, Windsor, England (Howard Sturgis’s house), and Ávila
Addresses
1890
537
(Autumn)–1896 (June) Room no. 7, Stoughton Hall, Harvard Yard 1893 (Summer) Visit to Gibraltar and Ávila, Spain 1895 (22 June–late September) Summer abroad: Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland, England 1895 (December) Naushon Island, Buzzard’s Bay, Cape Cod, Massachusetts ( John Forbes’s house)
1896
(27 June) Chateau Frontenac, Quebec, Canada ( July–September) 26 Banbury Road, Oxford, England (September) Visit to Amberley Cottage, Maidenhead, England (villa of John Francis Stanley, 2d Earl Russell) (October–December) King’s College (1 Silver Street), Cambridge, England (December) Trip to Paris
1897
( January–June) King’s College (2 Free School Lane), Cambridge, England ( July–August) Gibbs Hall (Fellows’ Building), King’s College, Cambridge, England (Nathaniel Wedd’s rooms)
1897
(September)–1898 (Spring) 75 Monmouth Street, Longwood, Brookline, Massachusetts (mother’s house)
1898
(Spring)–1899 (Spring) 52 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts
1899
( June–August) Summer at Oxford, visits to France and Spain
1899
(Autumn)–1904 ( June) 60 Brattle Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1900 (Summer) France, 108 Jermyn Street, London, England, and Oxford
538
Editorial Appendix
1901 ( July–September) Oxford, England (5 Grove Street, now Magpie Lane) 1902 and 1903 Summers in Europe 1904
( July)–1906 (September) Twenty-seven months abroad: sabbatical leave and Hyde Lecture program 1904 ( July–September) Travels in England, Belgium, Holland, Germany, and France (24 September–October) Ávila (sister Susana’s house) (November) Villa I Tatti, Settignano, Florence, Italy (the Bernard Berensons’ villa) (25 November–8 December) Grand Hôtel de Russie et des Iles Britanniques, Rome, Italy 1905 ( January–August) Traveling in the Middle East and Europe ( January) Egypt (February) Israel and Lebanon (March and April) Greece (May) Turkey, Hungary, and Germany ( June and July) England (August) Germany (visits Baron Albert von Westenholz) 1905 (September)–1906 ( June) Hyde Lecturer at the Sorbonne and at French provincial universities, Paris address: Hôtel Foyot, Rue de Tournon (September) Compiègne (October–mid-November) Ávila (Susana’s house) (April) Lyons, Montpellier, Cannes, Nîmes, and Orange (29 April–5 May) Toulouse (May) Pau, Bordeaux, Arcachon, La Rochelle, and Caen ( June) Dijon, Morez, Lyons, and Grenoble
1906
(mid-September)–1908 (mid-June) 75 Monmouth Street, Longwood, Brookline (mother’s house) 1907 ( January) Lectures in New York City
Addresses
539
1907 (mid-June–mid-September) Summer abroad: Germany, Switzerland, Spain (18 September) Arrival from Europe in New York City: Hotel Manhattan 1908
(mid-June–mid-September) Summer abroad: England, France; visit to Queen’s Acre, Windsor, in July (Howard Sturgis’s house)
1908
(mid-September)–1912 ( January) Room no. 3, Prescott Hall, Harvard Yard 1909 (mid-July–mid-September) Summer in England; visit in August to Telegraph House (“T.H.”), Chichester, Hampshire, England ( John Francis Stanley, Second Earl Russell’s house) 1910 (February) New York City (April) Visits Chicago, Illinois, and lectures at the University of Wisconsin, Madison (8 June–17 September) Summer abroad; visit to Ávila 1911 (mid-June–end of August) University Club, San Francisco, California
1912
(29 January) On board the R.M.S. Olympic (February) Visits to Queen’s Acre, Windsor, and to Trinity College, Cambridge (20 February) 7 Bennet Street, St. James, London (28 February) Hotel du Quai Voltaire, Paris (March and early April) Serrano 7, Madrid, Spain (Mercedes de la Escalera’s house) (May–August) 9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris (Charles Augustus Strong’s apartment becomes Santayana’s principal residence [except during the period July 1914–August 1919] until the end of August 1928.)
540
Editorial Appendix
(September–November) Travels in Italy (Milan, Bologna, Naples, Palermo) with an extend ed stay in Rome 1912
(30 November)–1913 (early January) Villa I Tatti, Settignano, Florence
1913
(February–mid-March) French Riviera: Nice and Monte Carlo (mid-March–April) Serrano 7, Madrid (May–mid-July) 9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris (3 July) Hotel de Ville, Brussels, Belgium (mid-August–October) 66 High Street, Oxford (November) 45 Chesterton Road, Cambridge, England (December) Ávila (Susana’s house)
1914
(January–mid-May) Hotel la Peninsular, Seville, Spain (mid-May–June) 9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris (27 July) Euston Hotel, London (2–3 August) Red Lion Hotel, Cambridge, England (5 August) Visit to Queen’s Acre, Windsor (16 August) Oxford, England (late August–11 October) 3 Ryder Street, London (12 October–14 December) 45 Chesterton Road, Cambridge
1914
(14 December)–1915 January) Old Ship Hotel, Brighton, England
Addresses
1915
541
(February–April) 45 Chesterton Road, Cambridge (May) 66 High Street, Oxford
1915
( June)–1919 (April) 22 Beaumont Street, Oxford (main residence during World War I) 1915 (September) Visits London, Lewes, and North Luffenham, England 1915 (October) Visit to Bournemouth, England 1917 (February–March) 6 Park Street, Torquay, Cornwall, England 1918 (Winter) Trip to London
1919
(end of April) Trip to London (13–16 and 20–25 June) Richmond Hill Hotel, Richmond, Surrey, England (16–20 June) Trip to London ( July–November) 9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris
1919
(December)–1920 (20 January) Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, Florence, Italy (Charles Augustus Strong’s villa)
1920
(20 January–early May) Hotel Minerva, Rome (during 1920) Final visit to Queen’s Acre, Windsor (May 1920) Florence (early June–September) 9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris (October) Ávila, Spain (Susana’s house)
542
Editorial Appendix
1920
(late October)–1921 (3 January) Hotel Castilla, Toledo, Spain
1921
(3 January–7 March) Serrano 7, Madrid, Spain (end of March–end of October) 9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris (early November) Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, and afterwards the Hotel Royal, Rome
1921
(15 November)–1922 (22 April) Hotel Marini, Rome
1922
(24 April–11 October) 9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris (part of June and early October spent in the Hôtel du Palais Royal)
1922
(25 October)–1923 (8 May) New York Hotel, Nice, France
1923
(mid-May–mid-September) 9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris (mid-September–31 October) Penultimate visit to England: London, Cambridge, Chichester, Oxford, Bath, and Dover (6 November–mid-November) Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, Florence
1923
(mid-November)–1924 (6 May) Hotel Bristol, Rome
1924
(6 May–mid-June) Hotel Bauer-Grünwald, Venice, Italy (mid-June–29 September) Hotel Cristallo, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy (30 September–mid-October) Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, Florence
1924
(late October)–1925 (1 June) Hotel Bristol, Rome
1925
(1–22 June) Paris
Addresses
543
(23 June–mid-July) Ávila (Susana’s house) (mid-July–September) 9, Avenue de 1’Observatoire, Paris 1925
(October)–1926 ( June) Hotel Bristol, Rome
1926
(end of June–1 October) Hotel Cristallo, Cortina d’Ampezzo (1–10 October) Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice
1926
(10 October)–1927 (5 June) Hotel Bristol, Rome
1927
(6 June–mid-September) 9, Avenue de 1’Observatoire, Paris (mid-September to mid-October) Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice (except for four days in Padua)
1927
(17 October)–1928 (10 June) Hotel Bristol, Rome
1928
(11 June–end of August) 9, Avenue de l’Observatoire, Paris (Strong gives up the apartment at the end of August 1928.) (early September) Trip to Oporto, Portugal, and Bayona, Spain (6–21 September) Hotel Continental, Vigo, Spain (22 September) Santiago de Compostela, Spain (early October) Grand Hotel Miramare & de la Ville, Genoa, Italy (3–16 October) Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, Florence
1928
(16 October)–1929 (May) Hotel Bristol, Rome
1929
(early June–mid-September) Hôtel Victoria, Glion-sur-Territet, Switzerland
544
Editorial Appendix
(mid-September–20 October) Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, Florence 1929
(November)–1930 (20 May) Hotel Bristol, Rome
1930
(22 May–15 June) A brief stay at the Hôtel Royal Haussmann, Paris. After final visit to Ávila, a return to the Royal Haussmann. (16–22 June) Pavillon Henri IV, Saint Germain-en-Laye, France (early July) Hôtel Foyot, Paris (11 July–23 September) Hôtel Vouillemont, 15, rue Boissy d’Anglas, Paris (end of September–21 October) Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, Florence
1930
(21 October)–1931 (10 June) Hotel Bristol, Rome
1931
(11–22 June) Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice (22 June–11 September) Hotel Miramonti, Cortina d’Ampezzo (12–17 September) Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice (18 September–23 October) Hôtel de Londres, Naples, Italy (23 October–end of December) Hotel Bristol, Rome (except during the first week of December in the Anglo-American Nursing Home, 311 via Nomentana)
1931
(1 January)–1932 (22 June) Hotel Bristol, Rome
1932
(23 June–early July) Hôtel Royal Haussmann, Paris ( July–August) Hôtel des Réservoirs, Versailles, France
Addresses
(1–5 September) Hôtel Royal Haussmann, Paris (6–10 September) Hôtel des Indes, The Hague, Netherlands (11 September–20 October) 7 Park Place, St. James, London (final visit to England) (21–24 October) Dover, England (25 October–early November) Paris 1932
(8 November)–1933 (20 June) Hotel Bristol, Rome
1933
(22 June–early September) Hotel Miramonti, Cortina d’Ampezzo (6 September–20 October) Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice
1933
(20 October)–1934 (19 June) Hotel Bristol, Rome
1934
(20 June–16 July) Villa Le Balze, Fiesole, Florence (18 July–11 September) Miramonti-Majestic Hotel, Cortina d’Ampezzo (12 September–17 October) Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice
1934
(20 October)–1935 (28 May) Hotel Bristol, Rome
1935
(29 May–17 June) Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice (18 June–10 September) Grand Hotel Savoia, Cortina d’Ampezzo (10 September–15 October) Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice
1935
(16 October)–1936 (3 June) Hotel Bristol, Rome
545
546
1936
Editorial Appendix
(4 June–11 August) Savoy-Hotel, rue de Rivoli, Paris (12 August–21 September) Hôtel Victoria, Glion-sur-Montreux, Switzerland
1936
(22 September)–1937 (14 June) Hotel Bristol, Rome
1937
(15–16 June) Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice (17 June–13 September) Grand Hotel Savoia, Cortina d’Ampezzo
1937
(14 September)–1938 (17 June) Hotel Bristol, Rome
1938
(18–20 June) Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice (20 June–13 September) Grand Hotel Savoia, Cortina d’Ampezzo
1938
(14 September)–1939 (18 June) Hotel Bristol, Rome (Autumn 1939: Hotel Bristol closed for reconstruction)
1939
(19–21 June) Milan and Venice (22 June–3 September) Grand Hotel Savoia, Cortina d’Ampezzo
1939
(4 September)–1940 (19 June) Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice
1940
(9 June–6 July) Hotel Ampezzo, Cortina d’Ampezzo (6 July–11 September) Grand Hotel Savoia, Cortina d’Ampezzo (11 September–end of September) Hôtel Royal Danieli, Venice
1940
(end of September)–1941 (c. 20 June) Grand Hôtel, Rome
Addresses
1941
(c. 20 June–12 September) Palazzo della Fonte, Fiuggi, Italy (12 September–14 October) Grand Hotel, Rome
1941
(14 October)–1952 (26 September) Calvary Hospital, Clinic of the Little Company of Mary, 6, Via Santo Stefano Rotondo, Rome
547
Manuscript Locations Academy
American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York NY
American
American Jewish Archives, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati OH
Amherst
Amherst College Library, Amherst MA
Antiquarian
American Antiquarian Society, Worcester MA
Barnes
Catherine Barnes, Philadelphia PA
Beinecke
The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven CT
Berkeley
The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley
Bidwell
David Bidwell, Geneva, Switzerland
Bodleian
The Bodleian Library, Oxford University, England
Boston
Department of Rare Books and Manuscripts, Boston Public Library, Boston MA
Bowdoin
Bowdoin College Library, Brunswick ME
Bowling Green
Western Kentucky University, Department of Library Special Collections, Bowling Green
British
The British Library of the British Museum, London, England
Brooklyn
Brooklyn College Library, Brooklyn NY
Brown
The John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence RI
Cambridge
University Library, Cambridge University, England
Castelli
Enrico Castelli Gattinara di Zubiena
Chicago
The Modern Poetry Library, University of Chicago Library, Chicago IL
Columbia
Butler Library, Columbia University, New York NY
Congress
The Library of Congress, Washington DC
Constable
Constable and Co. Ltd., London, England
Consulate
Spanish Consulate, Rome, Italy
Cornell
Cornell University Library, Ithaca NY
Dartmouth
Baker Memorial Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover NH
550
Editorial Appendix
DeKalb
The University Libraries, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb
Denson
Alan Denson, Aberdeenshire, Scotland
Dickson
Mr. Carl Byron Dickson, Doswell VA
Duke
William R. Perkins Library, Duke University, Durham NC
Dykeman
King Dykeman, Fairfield University, Fairfield CT
Fales
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, Fales Library, New York University, New York City
Fitzgerald
Robert Stuart Fitzgerald
Florida
University of Florida Library, Gainesville
Gardner
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston MA
Georgetown
Lauinger Library, Georgetown University, Washington DC
Gerber
William Gerber, Washington DC
Gilmour
Mervyn D. Gilmour, Portadown, Northern Ireland
Harvard
Harvard Archives, Harvard University, Cambridge MA
Houghton
The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge MA
Howgate
Mrs. George W. Howgate
Huntington
The Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino CA
Illinois
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Indiana
The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington
I Tatti
Villa I Tatti, Settignano, Italy
Kansas
University of Kansas Libraries, Lawrence
Kentucky
University of Kentucky, Lexington
King’s
King’s College Library, Cambridge University, England
Lamont
Collection of Lamont family papers
Lango
John W. Lango, New York NY
Leeds
Leeds University Library, The Brotherton Collection, Leeds, England
Lipinsky
Lino S. Lipinsky de Orlov
Lockwood
Lockwood Memorial Library, State University of New York at Buffalo
Loyola
Loyola University Library, Chicago IL
Macksey
Richard A. Macksey, Baltimore MD
Manuscript Locations
551
McMaster
Mills Memorial Library, Bertrand Russell Archives, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
Merriam
John McKinstry Merriam
Michigan
Bentley Historical Library, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Minnesota
University of Minnesota Libraries, St. Paul
Morgan
The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York NY
Mumford
Lewis Mumford
Munitz
Milton Karl Munitz
Murchie
Guy Murchie Jr.
Newberry
The Newberry Library, Chicago IL
New York
The New York Public Library, New York City
North Carolina
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Northwestern
Northwestern University Library, Evanston IL
Ohio
Ohio Historical Society, Columbus
Oregon
University of Oregon Libraries, Eugene
Penn
The Charles Patterson Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
The Pennsylvania State University Libraries, University Park
Princeton
Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Libraries, Princeton NJ
Provincial
Provincial Archives, Province of St. Albert the Great, Chicago IL
Radcliffe
The Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, Cambridge MA
Reading
The Library, University of Reading, England
Redwood
The Redwood Library and Athenaeum, Newport RI
Rigacci
Dino Rigacci
Riverside
Rivera Library, University of California, Riverside
Rockefeller
Rockefeller Archive Center, Sleepy Hollow NY
Rollins
Rollins College, Winter Park FL
Salamanca
University of Salamanca, Casa Museo Unamuno, Salamanca, Spain
Sanchez
Paloma Sanchez Sastre, Madrid, Spain
Santayana
Santayana Edition, Indianapolis IN
552
Editorial Appendix
Sastre
Sra. Rafael (Adelaida Hernandez) Sastre, Ávila, Spain
Sastre Martín
Sra. Eduardo Sastre Martín, Madrid, Spain
Scotland
National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh
Smith
Smith College Archives, Northampton MA
Smithsonian
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC
Sommer
Melvin L. Sommer
Sorbonne
Universites de Paris, Bibliotheque de la Sorbonne, France
Southern
Morris Library, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale
Spiegler
Mrs. Charles (Evelyn) Spiegler, Forest Hill NY
Stanford
Stanford University Libraries, Stanford CA
Stroup
Timothy Stroup, Annandale NY
Sturgis
Robert Shaw Sturgis, Weston MA
Syracuse
Syracuse University Library, Syracuse NY
Temple
Temple University Libraries, Philadelphia PA
Texas
Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas at Austin
Thompson
Samuel Martin Thompson
Tisch
Arthur Tisch, Palm Beach Gardens FL
Trinity
Trinity College Library, Cambridge University, England
UCLA
University of California at Los Angeles
Union
Union College Library, Schenectady NY
University Club
The University Club, New York NY
USC
University of Southern California Library, Los Angeles
Vermont
University of Vermont Libraries, Burlington
Viereck
Peter Robert Edwin Viereck, South Hadley MA
Virginia
Alderman Library, University of Virginia at Charlottesville
Wellesley
Wellesley College Library, Wellesley MA
Wheeler
Samuel Wheeler, Storrs CT
Williams
Williams College Archives and Special Collections, Williamstown MA
Yale
Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, New Haven CT
YIVO
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York NY
List of Recipients Book Five, 1933–1936 Abbot, Henry Ward Abbott, Charles David Ayer, James C. Barlow, Ellen Shaw (Mrs. Francis Channing Barlow) Barlow, Robert Shaw Beal, Boylston Adams Bliss, Sylvia Hortense Bodkin, Amy Maud Bolton, Laetitia Brown, Stuart Gerry Buchler, Justus Bush, Mary Potter (Mrs. Wendell T. Bush) Bush, Wendell T. Calverton, Victor Francis Canby, Henry Seidel Charles Scribner’s Sons Class of 1936 Clemens, Cyril Coniston Conger, George Perrigo Constable and Co., Ltd. Cory, Daniel MacGhie Davis, Charles P. De Casseres, Benjamin Dobrée, Bonamy Dowd Jr., David J. Ducasse, Curt John Dunn, Robert Steed Eastman, Max Forrester Freedman, Louis Alexander Funk, Charles Earle Gross, Mr.
554
Editorial Appendix
Holmes, Pauline Hook, Sidney Howard, Adelaide (Mrs. Baker Brownell) Howgate, George Washburne Ingersoll, Henrietta Auchmity Sturgis (Mrs. Charles Ingersoll) Janus, Christopher George Kallen, Horace Meyer Komroff, Manuel Kyllmann, Otto Lamont, Corliss Lamprecht, Sterling Power Larrabee, Harold Atkins Lawton, George Leavis, Frank Raymond Marichalar, Antonio Meloney, Marie Mattingly Moore, John G. Munitz, Milton Karl Munson, Gorham Bert Onderdonk, Andrew Joseph Origo, Iris Cutting Page, David Perry, Ralph Barton Phelps, William Lyon Powys, Llewelyn Randall, Mercedes Moritz (Mrs. John Randall) Randall Jr, John Herman Richards, Miriam Thayer Russell, George William (A.E.) Russell, Mary Annette Beauchamp (Mrs. John Russell) Sastre González, José Sastre González, Rafael Schwartz, Benjamin P. Scribner Jr., Charles Shelby, C. L. Smith, Logan Pearsall Strong, Charles Augustus Sturgis, George Sturgis, Rosamond Thomas Bennett (Mrs. George Sturgis)
Recipients Thompson, Samuel Martin Tindall, Evelyn Toy, Nancy Saunders (Mrs. Crawford H. Toy) Two Bryn Mawr Students Unidentified Recipient Van Doren, Carl Clinton von Hagen, Victor Wolfgang Wallack, Mr. Ward, Frederick Champion Wheelock, John Hall William Jackson, Ltd. Wolfson, Harry Austryn Zabel, Morton Dauwen
555
List of Unlocated Letters The following is a list of letters by George Santayana which were known to exist, but have not been located by the editors. To Mr. and Mrs. Jack Ames Prior to 12 Jun 1936 In 21 Jun 1936 to George Sturgis To Sarah Ripley (Mrs. Jack) Ames c. 23 Jul 1936 In 23 Jul 1936 to George Sturgis To Henri Bergson Prior to 13 Sep 1911 In 13 Sep 1911 to Charles Augustus Strong To John Berryman c. 21 Jan 1951 In 21 Jan 1951 to Robert Lowell To David and Carol Bidwell 10 Feb 1950 In 11 Feb 1950 to Raymond Bidwell To Josephine Sturgis Bidwell January 1945 In 13 Jan 1945 to Rosamond Sturgis 7 Jun 1945 In 7 Jun 1945 to Raymond Bidwell c. 20 Mar 1946 In 22 Mar 1946 to Raymond Bidwell To Emile Boutroux Prior to 21 Dec 1916 In 21 Dec 1916 to John Jay Chapman To Wendell T. Bush 8 Nov 1914 Mentioned in letter from Bush of 23 Nov 1914 4 Jul 1915 Mentioned in letter from Bush of 23 Aug 1915 To Lawrence Smith Butler September 1941 Mentioned in Sturgis Family Papers, Houghton Library To James McKeen Cattell c. April 1906 In 11 Apr 1906 to Hugo Münsterberg c. May 1906 In 10 May 1906 to Hugo Münsterberg To James Bryant Conant Prior to 14 Apr 1934 In 14 Apr 1934 to George Sturgis To Daniel MacGhie Cory 9 Sep 1933 (In a letter to William G. Holzberger, Mrs. Cory asked that this letter not be included, the editors never received copy, and it is not at Columbia.)
558
Editorial Appendix
To George and Margaret de Cuevas Dates unknown Two mentioned in 11 Mar 1940 to Cory To Durant Drake c. 21 Jul 1917 In 21 Jul 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong c. 21 Sep 1917 In 21 Sep 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong c. 3 Oct 1917 In 3 Oct 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong c. 21 Oct 1917 In 21 Oct 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong c. 10 Dec 1917 In 10 Dec 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong To Mr. Hoppin Duffield & Co. Date unknown In 21 Mar 1922 and 13 May 1922 to Constable & Company To Jacques Duron 20 Sep 1933 Cited in Duron’s La Pensée de George Santayana, 87 6 Feb 1939 Cited in Duron’s La Pensée de George Santayana, 518 To Josephine Sturgis Eldridge Prior to 3 Nov 1922 In 3 Nov 1922 to George Sturgis To Françoise c. 5 Aug 1914 In 5 Aug 1914 to Charles Augustus Strong c. 9 Aug 1914 In 9 Aug 1914 to Charles Augustus Strong c. 20 Aug 1917 In 20 Aug 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong c. 30 Apr 1919 In 30 Apr 1919 to Charles Augustus Strong To George Grady Date unknown (A letter to George Grady of 25 Jul 1949 is in Special Collections/Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, and the librarian knew of the existence of a second letter to Grady which was sold to a private collector.) To Carl Sadakichi Hartmann c. 3 Nov 1922 In 3 Nov 1922 to George Sturgis To Leslie W. Hopkinson c. 2 Apr 1940 In 2 Apr 1940 to Nancy Saunders Toy To Alanson Bigelow Houghton Two mentioned in 31 Aug 1887 to William Morton Fullerton To John Galen Howard Prior to 21 Aug 1882 In 21 Aug 1882 to Howard To the editor of the Hudson Review Date unknown. In 17 Apr 1952 to John Hall Wheelock To Otto Kyllmann Telegraph of 26 Aug 1935 Mentioned in letter to Kyllmann of same date To Pierre de Chaignon la Rose c. 8 Mar 1929 In 8 Mar 1929 to Maurice Firuski After 10 Mar 1930 In 10 Mar 1930 to Maurice Firuski
Unlocated Letters
559
To Bruno Lind (Robert C. Hahnel) c. 31 Jul 1951 In 3 Oct 1951 to Lind To Herbert Lyman 16 Aug 1940 Mentioned in Sturgis Family Papers, Houghton Library To Manageress of St. James’s Prior to 25 Aug 1932 In 25 Aug 1932 to Daniel MacGhie Cory To Marie c. 10 Dec 1920 In 10 Dec 1920 to Charles Augustus Strong c. 10 Apr 1922 In 10 Apr 1922 to Charles Augustus Strong To William Pepperell Montague c. 28 Mar 1921 In 28 Mar 1921 to Charles Augustus Strong To Samuel Eliot Morison c. 10 Mar 1930 In 10 Mar 1930 to Maurice Firuski To Andrew Joseph Onderdonk 10 Jan 1940 Mentioned in Sturgis Family Papers, Houghton Library To James Bissett Pratt c. 14 Sep 1917 In 14 Sep 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong To Thornton Delano Roberts Date unknown In 3 Oct 1951 to Bruno Lind (Robert C. Hahnel) To José Rodriguez Feo Date unknown Mentioned in biographies of Wallace Stevens To William Greene Roelker c. 10 Apr 1931 In 10 Apr 1931 to Curt John Ducasse To Arthur Kenyon Rogers c. 14 Sep 1917 In 14 Sep 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong To Celedonio Sastre Serrano 3 Dec 1928 In 4 Dec 1928 to George Sturgis To George Frederick Stout 13 Feb 1912 In 14 Feb 1912 to George Herbert Palmer 23 Feb 1912 In 23 Feb 1912 to George Herbert Palmer To Charles Augustus Strong c. 23 Apr 1920 [telegram] In 23 April 1920 to Strong c. 8 Jan 1929 In 19 Jan 1929 to Daniel MacGhie Cory To Margaret Strong c. 3 Sep 1912 In 3 Sep 1912 to Charles Augustus Strong c. 3 Oct 1916 In 3 Oct 1916 to Charles Augustus Strong c. 13 Jan 1917 In 13 Jan 1917 to Charles Augustus Strong To Carol Sturgis (2d wife of George Sturgis) Date unknown In 10 Mar 1945 to Raymond Bidwell (Written shortly after the death of George Sturgis, probably early 1945.)
560
Editorial Appendix
To George Sturgis Postcard between 8 Jun and 17 Jul 1939 In 17 Jul 1939 to George Sturgis To Josephine Sturgis (sister) 12 Dec 1914 In 14 Dec 1914 to Susan Sturgis de Sastre Prior to 28 Mar 1915 In 28 Mar 1915 to Susan Sturgis de Sastre Prior to 29 Jun 1915 In 29 Jun 1915 to Susan Sturgis de Sastre To Maud Sturgis Prior to 16 Jan 1924.....In 16 Jan 1924 to George Sturgis To Susan Sturgis de Sastre 13 Aug 1903 13 Aug 1903 to Susan mentions another postcard sent on this date 24 Apr 1906 25 Apr 1906 to Susan mentions two postcards sent on 24 Apr 1906 24 Sep 1912 Companion to another postcard of 24 Sep 1912 30 Sep 1912 Companion to another postcard of 30 Sep 1912 28 Oct 1913 Companion to another postcard of 28 Oct 1913 To Unidentified Recipients Prior to 7 Feb 1934 In 7 Feb 1934 to Charles P. Davis Prior to 1 Jan 1936 In 1 Jan 1936 to Otto Kyllmann To James Ward January or early February 1912 In 14 Feb 1912 to George Herbert Palmer To Bentley Wirt Warren Correspondence mentioned in 31 May 1933 to George Washburne Howgate To Luciano Zampa c. 14 Sep 1919 In 14 Sep 1919 to Joseph Malaby Dent
INDEX Abbot, Henry Ward and the “Dark Lady of the Sonnets,” 46 and Harvard, xlvF identified, 17n letter(s) to, 17, 42, 43, 46 “Locke and the Frontiers of Common Sense,” requests copy of, 42, 43 Santayana gives advice, xlv–xlvi mentioned, xlvii, l, li, lii, 436, 439 Abbott, Charles David and “Earliest Verses of George Santayana,” 410 identified, 410n letter(s) to, 410 ABC (Spanish journal), 304n, 305n “ABC of Epistemology” (Cory, unpublished), xix, 57n, 60n, 208n Abélard, Pierre, 234n Abraham (Bible) identified, 156n mentioned, lvii, 155, 160, 364 Absolute values, Santayana on, 189 Abyssinian War, xxii, 217, 245n, 250, 251 Adelphi. See New Adelphi The Adventures of Ideas (Whitehead), 17, 18n The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God (Shaw), 4, 6 “The Aeneid” (Santayana), 31n, 141, 193 The Aeneid (Vergil), 31n Aesthetics, xvii, xliv “An Æsthetic Soviet” (Santayana), 158, 159n, 329, 409, 409n After Strange Gods (Eliot), 92, 92n Alain. See Chartier, Émile À la recherche du temps perdues (Proust), 31, 133 Alden, Oliver (The Last Puritan) his age, 275, 284 Canby on, 291 critics on, 259, 362 Dewey on, 369 his father, 234 Hamlet, compared to, 290
and Harvard, 224 Morley on, 288 his Puritanism, 259, 308, 369 Rosamond Sturgis on, 288 and Santayana, 254, 337 Santayana on, 157, 194, 253, 259, 288–89, 290, 297, 308, 321–22, 347, 362, 369 Santayana’s friends, composite of, 259, 270, 306, 362 and Williams College, 29 mentioned, 35, 62–63, 63, 91, 151, 166, 173, 176, 249, 271, 287, 289, 313, 314, 327, 355 Alderman Library (University of Virginia), 432 Aldo (Strong’s manservant) identified, 53n mentioned, 52, 129 Alfonso XIII, king of Spain identified, 295n mentioned, 294, 301, 376n “Alternatives to Liberalism” (Santayana), 98, 98n, 99, 105, 105n, 106, 111, 117, 118, 122, 133 America(n) and Anglomania, 153 books, Santayana on, 15, 153 and the Boston Brahmin, lxii and Boston society, lix, 417 Centennial Exhibition, 319 communists on, 169 culture, Santayana on, 139, 168–69 and the dollar, xiii, xiv, xv education in, Santayana on, xliv, lvii and the Great Depression, xi, xiii, 37, 38, 41, 51, 53, 68n, 69n, 102, 133, 330 humanists, 41 in Italy, 313 and The Last Puritan, 424 Paris, influence in, 342 philosophy in, Santayana on, 93 political situation in, 305n
562
The Letters of George Santayana
America(n) (continued) Santayana, does not return to, xxii, 70, 185–86, 190–91, 199, 247 Santayana on, xxii, 93, 121, 133, 153, 213, 239–40, 288, 291, 328, 330, 347, 397 and Santayana’s life in, 174, 312, 330, 343 Santayana’s reputation in, 405 young people in, 312, 330 mentioned, 38, 180–81, 248, 257, 273, 290, 301, 302, 311, 314, 322, 332 The American Institute of 1770 (Harvard), 174, 175n American Literary Manuscripts, 433, 441n American Literature, 433 The American Mercury ( journal) identified, 273n mentioned, 273, 292 American Philosophical Association, 49n, 93, 93n American Philosophy, Today and Tomorrow, (ed. Kallen and Hook), 269–70, 270, 270n American Revolution, 401 Ames, Betty Breneman (Mrs. Van Meter Ames) identified, 5n Santayana, conversations with, 4 Ames, Jack, 337, 338n, 348, 357 Ames, Sarah Ripley (Mrs. Jack Ames), 337, 338, 348, 357–58, 358 Ames, Van Meter identified, 5n Proust and Santayana; the Aesthetic Way of Life, 5n Santayana, conversations with, 4 Analysis ( journal) Duncan-Jones, A. E., editor of, 88n “On the Origin in Experience of the Notion of a Physical Object,” 88n, 110, 111 Santayana on, 88 Anathema ( journal), 190n Andersen, Andreas Martin identified, 258n Santayana, his sketch of, 258, 342, 352–53, 360, 408 Andersen, Hendrik Christian identified, 258–59n and Santayana’s sketch, 258, 405
Anglican Church, 213 Animal faith, Santayana on, 62, 109, 297, 327 Anno Santo, 15, 16n Apollo, 324 Arabian Nights. See A Thousand and One Nights Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination (Bodkin), 155, 156n, 163 Aretino, Pietro identified, 20n mentioned, 19 Ariadne, 64n Aristotle, xlii, 123, 130, 147, 239, 316, 324, 328 Art, Santayana on, 189 Art and Artifice in Shakespeare (Stoll), 23–24 Art and the Life of Action (Eastman), 189, 189n Aryan Society, lviii “As I Like It” (Phelps’s book column), 306, 307 The Atlantic Monthly ( journal), 142, 142n Ávila drawing of, 393, 394 photographs of, 353, 357, 360, 383, 402 pronunciation of, 353 and Santayana’s family, 174, 360 Santayana’s father’s house in, 265, 266n, 278, 316, 343, 345, 390 mentioned, 373, 376, 380, 386 Ayer, James C. identified, 49n letter(s) to, 48
Babbitt (Lewis), 153, 154n Babbitt, Irving identified, 73n and moralism, 107 his philosophy, Santayana on, 107 mentioned, 72, 92 Bacon, Francis identified, 379n and religion, 378 Baeza, Ricardo identified, 275n translates Oscar Wilde, 274n mentioned, 274
Index Bainville, Jacques identified, 28n Napoleon, 27, 28 his writing, Santayana on, 27 Bangs, Francis Reginald “Swelly” identified, 90n and The Last Puritan, 249, 266 mentioned, 89, 248, 249, 312 Barley (unidentified), 351, 380 Barlow, Ellen “Nellie” Shaw identified, 210n letter(s) to, 247 mentioned, 247, 247 Barlow, Francis Channing, 210n Barlow, Robert Shaw Harvard, student at, xxiii his health, 378, 400 identified, 90n and The Last Puritan, xxiii, 249, 266, 325, 331, 333 letter(s) to, 248, 312, 331, 350, 379, 401 his life, Santayana compares with his, 312 relationship to George Sturgis, 199, 199n, 209, 248 Santayana, friendship with, xxiii, 247, 312, 331 mentioned, xix, lxvi, 89, 209, 248, 315 Barnard College, 162 Barry, Susie (unidentified), 346 Basques, 363, 364, 376 Bayley, Edward Bancroft, and Oliver Alden, 259, 270 Beal, Betty (daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Boylston Beal), 73, 73n Beal, Boylston Adams and the Delta Phi Club, 289 his health, xi, 7 his hotel, 15 identified, 8n and The Last Puritan, xxi, 255, 268, 270 letter(s) to, 73, 185, 196, 270 Obiter Scripta, Santayana sends copy of, 268 mentioned, xix, xxiii, xlvii, 60, 248 Beal, Elsie Grew (Mrs. Boylston Beal) identified, 73n mentioned, 73 Beam, Miss, 246 Beauty, Santayana on, 50, 189, 357
563
Becket, Saint Thomas à identified, 214n a martyr, 213 Santayana on, 213 Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung (German publisher), xxv, 335 Being and Time. See Sein und Zeit Belgion, Montgomery, 213, 214n Belief, Santayana on, 324, 326, 327 Bell, Gordon Knox and the Delta Phi Club, 196, 289 identified, 186n mentioned, xix, 185 Bellissen, Comtesse de, 114, 115n, 118, 132 Benda, Julien identified, 27n mentioned, 26 Benjamin Franklin (Van Doren), 94n Berenson, Bernard identified, 290n I Tatti (villa), 17, 17n Santayana on, lix his wife, 17 mentioned, 131, 289 Berenson, Mary Whitall Smith (Mrs. Bernard Berenson) I Tatti (villa), 17, 17n mentioned, xlviii, 17 Bergson, Henri Cory reads, 261, 302 his élan vital, 264 fonction fabulatrice, 27, 28n, 123, 128 identified, 11n La Pensée et le mouvant, 123, 123n, 131 Les Deux sources de la morale et de la religion, 27n, 28n, 67, 71, 131 his philosophy, Santayana on, 67, 130, 261, 263–64, 317 his philosophy and biology, 264 his religious writings, Santayana on, 71 Santayana critiques, 131 Santayana on, 26, 57, 131, 261 mentioned, xlii, 63, 133, 136 Berkeley, George identified, 229n Santayana on, 229–30 Santayana’s article on, 277, 329, 352, 353, 355 mentioned, xlii, 235, 236
564
The Letters of George Santayana
Berkeley and Malebranche: A Study in the Origins of Berkeley’s Thought (Luce), 235, 235n, 236 Bernhard Tauchnitz (publisher), 206, 251 Bernini, Giovanni Lorenzo identified, 352n and the Triton Fountain, xxiv, 351 “Bertrand Russell’s Searchlight” (Santayana), 272, 273n, 273, 292, 314, 317 Bhagavad Gita, xx, 207, 207n Bible criticism, 147, 148 Bidwell, Josephine Sturgis [Eldredge] (Santayana’s niece) identified, 266n The Last Puritan, Santayana sends, 266 and Santayana’s will, 278, 315, 334 mentioned, 210n Bidwell, Raymond Brewer, married to Josephine Sturgis, 266 Biosophical Review ( journal), 142 “Bishop Berkeley 1685–1753” (Santayana), 229, 229n, 230, 235, 236, 240, 277, 311–12, 325, 329, 352, 353, 355, 357, 365, 402, 411, 417, 418 Bliss, Sylvia Hortense identified, 171n her individualism, 171 letter(s) to, 170 her philosophy, Santayana on, 170–71 Sea Level, 170, 171n her writing, Santayana on, 171 The Blue Sisters (Little Company of Mary) identified, 289n mentioned, xlix, lix, 287 Bodkin, Amy Maud Archetypal Patterns in Poetry: Psychological Studies of Imagination, 155, 156n, 163 and archetypes, 163 identified, 156n letter(s) to, 155, 163 her writing, Santayana on, 155–56, 163 Boer War, 222, 224n Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas, xliv Bolshevism, lvi, lxiii, lxv–lxvi, 146, 146n, 220, 248, 362, 400 Bolton, Laetitia letter(s) to, 416 Boni and Liveright (publisher), 210, 211 Bonnard, Abel identified, 217n
his speech, Santayana on, 217 mentioned, 218 Book-of-the-Month Club, xxi, 237, 238, 239–40, 241, 243, 250, 263, 265, 278, 289, 298, 301, 314, 322, 333, 337, 365, 399, 418 Book-of-the-Month Club News, 289, 290n Boring, Edwin Garrigues identified, 41n Physical Dimensions of Consciousness, 41, 41n Bosso, Hamilton (unidentified), on The Last Puritan, 302 “Boston Latin School 1635–1935” (Santayana), 167n The Boston Latin School. 300th Anniversary 1635–1935, 167n Boston Public Latin School anniversary programme, 192–93 “Boston Latin School 1635–1935,” 167n Merrill, headmaster, xlvi, 193 poetry scandal, 193 Santayana, lieutenant colonel of regiment, 174 and Santayana’s photograph, 359 The Boston Latin School. 300th Anniversary 1635–1935, 167n mentioned, 127 Boston Public Library, 318 Boston’s Monarchist Party, 289, 290n, 292, 301 Boswell, James identified, 5n The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D, 5n mentioned, 4 Brahma, 300, 301n Braun, Adolphe, 357, 357n Brave New World (A. Huxley), 97n Brémond, Henri article on, 63 Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France, 64n identified, 64n and poetry, 63, 64 Prayer and Poetry: A Contribution to Poetical Theory, 64n “Breve historia de mis opiniones” (trans. Marichalar), 89, 90n Bridges, Robert Seymour identified, 64n his poetry, 63
Index The Testament of Beauty, 64 mentioned, 63 “A Brief History of My Opinions” (Santayana), 89, 194, 195n, 285, 285n, 349, 357, 358, 361, 368 “Brief History of Myself” (Santayana), 291, 292n British empiricism and essence, Santayana on, 92–93 British Institute of Philosophy, 396, 396n Brooks, Van Wyck The Flowering of New England, 1815–1865, 377, 377n identified, 377n Brown, Florence Lucy Rudston identified, 232n The Last Puritan, Santayana sends, 231 Brown, Stuart Gerry identified, 107n letter(s) to, 107 Brownell, Baker Earth Is Enough: An Essay in Religious Realism, 105, 105n identified, 105n Browning, Robert identified, 297n mentioned, 297 Brown Shipley and Company (London), xviii, 9–10, 10n, 81, 89, 140, 170, 172, 182, 188, 196, 208, 243, 244–45, 257, 265, 278, 279, 294, 301, 316, 333, 366, 367, 391, 397, 399, 414, 416 Bruno, Giordano identified, 378–79n and religion, 378 mentioned, xlix Buchler, Justus his article, 354 identified, 128n on The Last Puritan, 355 letter(s) to, 127, 141, 158, 179, 184, 290, 323, 354 Obiter Scripta, xvii, 127–28, 128n, 158, 160, 184, 201, 211, 212, 277, 290, 293, 323, 328, 387 Obiter Scripta, bibliography for, 127, 141, 276 Santayana on, 329 and Santayana’s letters, 387 and “Ultimate Religion,” 201–2 Bucknell University Press, 432
565
Buddha, 76, 78, 369 Bush, Mary Potter (Mrs. Wendell Bush) letter(s) to, 66, 128, 215 and Santayana’s birthday, 66 travel plans, 128 mentioned, xvii Bush, Wendell T. his health, 66, 128, 216 identified, 23n letter(s) to, 66 and Santayana’s birthday, 66 mentioned, xvii, 23 Butler, Lawrence Smith identified, 260n and Oliver Alden, 259 Butler, Samuel identified, 260n The Way of All Flesh, 260, 260n, 261 Butler Library (Columbia University), 142–43, 201, 211, 432
Calverton, V[ictor] F[rancis] (George Goetz) and American culture, 168–69 and the colonial-complex, 153–54 and cosmopolitan communism, 153 and human nature, 400 identified, 139n letter(s) to, 139, 140, 152, 168, 400 The Liberation of American Literature, 152, 154n The Man Inside: Being the Record of the Strange Adventures of Allen Steele Among the Xulus, 400, 400n The Passing of the Gods, 139, 139n, 152 and Puritanism, xvii and “Why I Am Not a Marxist,” 169 his writing, Santayana on, 139, 152–53 Calvin, John ( Jean Cauvin) identified, 379n and religion, 378 Cambridge University Press, 192 Campbell, Patrick Thomas the Boston Latin School, superintendent of, 166 identified, 167n Campo Verano Cemetery (Rome), lv Canby, Henry Seidel and “Alternatives to Liberalism,” 106, 111, 117, 122, 133 American Memoir, 65n
566
The Letters of George Santayana
Canby, Henry Seidel (continued) and The Genteel Tradition at Bay, 65, 122 and humanism, 122 identified, 65n The Last Puritan, review of, 291, 292n letter(s) to, 65, 121, 181, 291 Santayana’s article, pays for, 133 and Santayana’s photograph, 211 and Santayana’s works, 98, 121, 228 and the Saturday Review of Literature, lv, 65n, 122 Capitalism, Santayana on, xii–xiii, lxiii, 21, 39, 68n, 375 Carlists, 363, 364n Catalonians, 376, 376n, 398 Catholicism Catholics, 63, 70, 71 Catholic Saints, 227 the Church, 401 and Cory, 122, 324 doctrine, 227 and The Last Puritan, 321–22 and prayer, 155, 156n Santayana on, 116, 151, 122–23, 174, 308, 324 Causation and the Types of Necessity (Ducasse), 101, 101n Cavalcanti, Guido Canzone d’amore, 72n identified, 72n mentioned, xli, 72 Centennial Exhibition, 319 Cervantes, Miguel de Don Quixote de la Mancha, 20n, 170 identified, 20n mentioned, 19 Chamberlain, Houston Stewart identified, 400n mentioned, 400 Chapman, John Jay, and the Aryan Society, lviii Character and Opinion in the United States (Santayana), 90, 94, 94n, 162, 162n, 329 Charles Scribner’s Sons and The Genteel Tradition at Bay, 65 and The Last Puritan, xx–xxi, 152, 158, 183, 186, 187, 190, 191, 192, 196, 198, 199, 200, 203n, 204, 220, 229, 233n, 238, 240, 242n, 243, 244, 246n, 247, 248, 253, 260, 265, 267, 271, 275,
284, 286, 289, 298, 314, 322, 325, 333, 341, 341n, 345, 366n, 398, 399 letter(s) to, 335, 392 and The Letters of George Santayana (Cory), 431 “Locke and the Frontiers of Common Sense,” 42 and Obiter Scripta, 179–80, 276, 290, 293, 335, 373, 388 The Philosophy of Santayana: Selections from the Works of George Santayana, 141, 142, 210–11, 276 Poems, xlviii and The Realm of Spirit, 210n and The Realm of Truth, 210n Santayana, contract with, 314 Santayana, relationship with, 179–80 and Santayana’s royalties, liv, 118, 211–12, 389, 395, 398, 414 and Santayana’s works, 15n, 94, 192, 409 Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy, 14, 192 “Ultimate Religion,” 17 The Works of George Santayana (Triton), 320, 337–38, 354, 358, 370, 392 mentioned, xii, xlix, 294, 334 Chartier, Émile (pseud. Alain) identified, 207n Les Dieux, xx, 207, 207n, 213, 215, 225 quote from, 255, 256n Santayana on, 213, 215 Santayana wishes to quote from, 215 Chaucer, Geoffrey The Canterbury Tales, 64n identified, 64n Santayana on, 63 Cheeryble brothers (Nicholas Nickleby), 307, 307n Chetwynd, Augusta Robinson (Mrs. Philip Chetwynd), 59, 59n Chetwynd, Philip (son of Philip and Augusta), 59, 59n Christianity Bible criticism, 147 Santayana on, 50, 147–48, 202, 243, 401 “The Class of 1882” (Santayana), 31n, 141, 193 Class of 1886 (Harvard University) fiftieth anniversary of, 331n
Index letter(s) to, 330 photograph of, 343 Clemenceau, George identified, 252n mentioned, 251 Clemens, Cyril Coniston identified, 310n on The Last Puritan, 310 letter(s) to, 310, 420 Mark Twain, cousin of, 310n Obiter Scripta, Santayana sends, 421 Clemens, Samuel Langhorne (pseud. Mark Twain) identified, 300n his letters, editors of, 435 mentioned, xlix, 300 Coates, Adrian, and A Sceptical Examination of Contemporary British Philosophy, 6, 7n, 11 Codman, Julian and the Delta Phi Club, 289 identified, 290n Cohen, Morris, and Obiter Scripta, 159, 159n, 160 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor identified, 18–19n mentioned, 18 Columbia Review ( journal) on Santayana’s literary periods, 370 “Santayana’s Novel,” 369–70, 371n “Santayana’s Philosophy,” 369, 371n Columbia University Butler Library, 142–43, 201, 211, 432 Cory attends, liii Rare Book and Manuscript Library, 439, 441n mentioned, 45, 76 Columbia University Press, 47, 180, 276 Columbus, Christopher Columbus’s egg, 344, 344n identified, 344n Comic universe, Santayana on, 409 Communism, and Santayana, 383 “Communism without Dogmas” (Hook), 116, 117n Communists, Santayana on, 169 The Complete Works of Saint John of the Cross, Doctor of the Church (Saint John), 207, 207n, 220, 227, 251 Complete Poems (Holzberger), lxiv, 31 46, 410n
567
Comte, Isidore Auguste Marie François identified, 67n mentioned, 67 Conant, James Bryant Harvard, president of, xix, 102, 190 identified, 102n and Santayana, 302 Santayana, pupil of, 102 and Santayana’s fellowship, 102, 125 mentioned, 303n Concerning Beauty (Mather), 180, 181n Conger, Agnes (Mrs. George Conger) identified, 49n to visit Santayana, 49 Conger, George Perrigo identified, 49n letter(s) to, 49 to visit Santayana, 49 Conscious automata, Santayana on, 351 Consciousness, Santayana on, xliv, 113, 117, 167, 170, 238–39, 264, 317, 326 Constable and Co., Ltd. (publishers) and The Last Puritan, xix, xx–xxi, 72, 152, 161, 183, 186, 187, 190, 191, 196, 200, 201, 203n, 206, 212n, 224, 226n, 229, 233n, 234, 235, 237, 237n, 238n, 240, 242, 242n, 243, 246, 248, 270–71, 271, 275, 278, 284, 286, 298, 333, 345, 366n letter(s) to, 234, 237, 335, 338, 356, 367 and Obiter Scripta, 184, 212, 369, 373, 388, 421 and Poems, 3 and The Realm of Spirit, 210n and The Realm of Truth, 210n Santayana’s book covers, 373, 373n and Santayana’s royalties, 404 and Santayana’s works, 94, 338, 356 mentioned, 159, 294, 335 Contemplative life, Santayana on, 188 Contemporary American Philosophy: Personal Statements (ed. Adams and Montague), 89, 90n Correggio (painter), 14n Cortina d’Ampezzo (Italy) Dolomites (Italian mountain range), 37 Hotel Miramonti, 37, 39, 44, 124, 130, 188, 199, 204, 215, 286 Hotel Savoia, 197, 199, 204, 286 Santayana on, 37, 39, 44, 47, 58, 81, 114, 129, 130, 134, 136, 217, 286, 299
568
The Letters of George Santayana
Cory, Daniel MacGhie and “Alternatives to Liberalism,” 111, 117, 122 Analysis, Santayana sends, 88 baseball, gives lessons in, 285, 288 Bergson, reads, 261, 263, 302 his birthday, 422, 423n British Institute of Philosophy, member of, 396, 396n and Catholicism, 122, 302, 323–24 his citizenship, 80, 81n Columbia University, attends, liii death of, 432 and Eliot, 144, 145n in England, 4, 24, 32, 63, 190, 363 and essence, 54–55 his finances, xii, xx, lv, 12, 40, 52–53, 125, 217, 238, 310–11 his French, 216 his future, 53, 125–26 his health, xi, 7, 8, 10, 118, 123, 310, 311 and idealism, 317 identified, 5n and images in the brain, 54–55, 56 and intellect, 326 and The Last Puritan, xiii, xviii, xix, xx, 14–15, 32, 34–35, 72, 91, 114, 118, 131, 135, 144, 149, 150, 151, 152, 156, 157–58, 160, 161, 165, 170, 172, 175, 177, 183, 217, 231, 235 letter(s) to, 4, 8, 10, 12, 17, 23, 27, 32, 34, 35, 36, 40, 44, 47, 52, 54, 55, 57, 59, 62, 63, 64, 71, 75, 79, 83, 85, 88, 91, 92, 95, 98, 101, 104, 106, 111, 114, 117, 118, 122, 123, 124, 125, 129, 131, 133, 135, 136, 137, 144, 149, 150, 152, 156, 159, 161, 165, 172, 176, 195, 197, 201, 206, 212, 216, 219, 225, 228, 235, 239, 241, 252, 254, 261, 271, 272, 282, 285, 301, 305, 310, 316, 323, 326, 339, 346, 371, 380, 382, 384, 391, 396, 403, 405, 413, 421, 422, 423, 426 Lionel Grey, his pseudonym, 213, 214n, 216 his living arrangments, xv, xvi, 60, 60n, 71, 114, 115n, 118, 131, 132, 134 Lucia di Lammermoor, favorite opera, 97n and marriage, xv, xvi, 125, 126, 129, 130n and marriage, Santayana on, xv–xvi “Michael” (unpublished novel), xx, lv,
206, 207n, 219, 228, 253, 285, 404 and Miller, 9 New Criterion, Santayana sends, 212 Obiter Scripta, Santayana sends, 268 and percepts, 76 as a philosopher, 83, 227 his philosophy, Santayana on, 55–56, 59, 60n, 75–76, 111, 316–17, 403 The Philosophy of Santayana: Selections from the Works of George Santayana, Santayana sends, 413 photograph of, 136 and politics, 133 and professors, 27 publications “An ABC of Epistemology” (unpublished), xix, 57, 60, 207n article(s), liv, 195, 196n “Dr. Whitehead on Perception,” 10–11, 11n “The Later Philosophy of Mr. Santayana,” 151, 151n, 152, 316, 317 The Letters of George Santayana, 431, 433, 434 “On the Origin in Experience of the Notion of a Physical Object,” 88n, 110, 111 “Perception and Knowledge,” 54–55, 55n “The Realism of Common Sense,” 55–56, 57n, 57, 72, 75–76 Santayana: The Later Years, xlvii, lxiv, lxv, 440, 441n “A Study of Santayana with Some Remarks on Critical Realism,” 98, 98n and Randall, 94 and The Realm of Matter, liv, 125 and The Realm of Spirit, 213, 214n and The Realm of Truth, 380, 382, 384–85, 389, 391–92 Santayana allowance from, xi, xiv, xv, xviii, xx, xxii, liv, 8, 10, 11, 12, 27, 35, 52–53, 57, 71, 76, 79–80, 84, 99, 111, 114–15, 126, 132, 150, 156, 172, 176, 181, 196, 217, 219, 261, 263, 266, 301, 305–6, 327, 339, 342, 391, 396, 403, 413, 422 his article on, 98, 98n
Index books from, 241 his correspondences, 432–33, 434, 441n correspondence with, lxii his friendship with, 255 relationship with, xvi, liii, lv, 430 Santayana on, xii, xx, lxv, 75, 125–26, 135, 136, 217, 310–11 and Santayana’s belongings, xx, 395 and Santayana’s finances, xiv–xv, 81n and Santayana’s health, xxiii, 285, 288 Santayana’s literary executor, 235, 240, 288, 387–88 and Santayana’s philosophy, liii–liv, 264, 302–3, 316–17, 413, 422–23 and Santayana’s royalities, liv Santayana’s secretary, liv, 83, 288, 431–32 and Santayana’s will, xxiii, 265, 272, 278, 279, 294–95, 310–11, 334, 432 and Santayana’s works, xx, 144, 152, 295, 334, 349, 356, 359, 395, 432 visits Santayana, 24, 150, 156, 165, 170, 176, 177, 263, 286, 299, 305, 391 his writing, Santayana on, xliv, 10–11, 48, 54–55, 56–57, 59, 75–78, 98, 123, 157, 196, 206, 316–17, 423 Scrutiny, article for, 98 and Some Turns of Thought, 64 and Spencer, 263 and sports, lv, 131, 131n, 219, 227, 288, 306 Strong allowance from, xii, liv, 12, 40, 52, 54 relationship with, xvi, 282 and Strong, 391 Strong on, xx, 123, 125, 125–26, 136 and Strong’s fellowship, xx, 81n Strong’s secretary, liv, 10, 288 and Strong’s will, xvi, xx, 40, 80, 125, 236, 265–66, 295 and Strong’s writing, 217, 339 Strong visits, 24 visits Strong, 217, 263, 299, 305,
569
403 his writing, Strong on, 56, 236 travel plans, xviii, xxiv, 53, 165, 180, 181, 205, 261, 282, 286, 305, 338, 339, 342, 346, 348, 403, 403–4, 404, 422–23 on The Works of George Santayana, 404 mentioned, xvii, xxii, xlii, xlvii, l, lxi, lxiii, lxiv, lxv, 51, 79, 173n, 278, 358, 414, 433, 436, 441n Cory, David (Daniel Cory’s father) identified, 182n mentioned, 181, 238 Cory, Margaret “Margot” Degen Batten (Mrs. Daniel Cory) identified, 81n and Santayana’s correspondences, 434, 441n Santayana’s literary executrix, 432 mentioned, xv, xvi, 80 Cory, Rev. David M. (Daniel Cory’s brother) identified, 239n mentioned, 238 Cosmology, 43n Couchoud, Paul Louis identified, 67n Le Problème de Jésus et les origenes du Christianisme, 66, 67n A Creed for Sceptics (Strong), 302, 303n, 339, 391, 403, 419, 421—22 Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle: Problems of Aristotle’s Physics in Jewish and Arabic Philosophy (Wolfson), 120n Criterion. See New Criterion “The Critical Writings of George Santayana” (Leavis), 272, 273n, 273, 276 “The Critique of Pragmatism” (Santayana), 30n “Croce’s Aesthetics” (Santayana), 141, 142, 142n Crosby, Rita (unidentified), 346, 346n “Crusades for Common Sense” (Erskine), 45, 46n Cruz y Raya ( journal) Heidegger’s article, 55, 70 “Long Way Round to Nirvana,” 70 Maritain article, 207 Santayana on, 123 mentioned, 55, 63, 70, 208
570
The Letters of George Santayana
“The Cry of the Bull from Beyond: What Have I Done to Them?” (Freedman), 182, 182n Cuevas, Elizabeth. See Strong-Cuevas, Elizabeth Cuevas, George his children, 51 Cruz y Raya, Santayana sends, 70 his finances, xiv, 80 identified, 25n The Last Puritan, Santayana sends, 231 in Paris, 24 in Rome, 421 Santayana on, 146 and Santayana’s will, 279 Santayana writes to, 226 stays with Strong, xiv, 52 travel plans, 44, 226 visits Santayana, xxv, 421 mentioned, 70, 129 Cuevas, Johnny his health, xxv, 421 identified, 25n stays with Strong, 51, 59, 60, 67, 129 mentioned, 70, 80, 125, 146 Cuevas, Margaret Strong (Mrs. George Cuevas) her children, 51 her finances, xiv, 58–59, 80, 125 her health, 421 identified, 25n in Paris, 24 in Rome, 421 Santayana on, xxv and Santayana’s books, 67 and Santayana’s will, 279 and Strong, xlviii stays with Strong, xiv, 52, 59 travel plans, 44 mentioned, 35, 40, 70, 129, 146 Culture, Santayana on, 168–69 Curtis, Anna Shaw (Mrs. George Curtis), 210n Curtis, George William, 210n Cushing, Howard Gardiner and the Delta Phi Club, 289 identified, 259n mentioned, 258 Cutting, Sybil Cuffe (Mrs. Bayard Cutting) identified, 184n Villa Medici, 26, 27n
Cutting, William Bayard, Jr. his daughter, 395 identified, 395n Villa Medici, 26, 27 mentioned, 395
Dal Monte, Toti identified, 97n opera singer, xvii, 97 Damnable Opinions (Powys), 262 Dante (Alighieri) The Divine Comedy, 85 mentioned, xli, 20, 178 “Dark Lady of the Sonnets” (Santayana), 46, 46n Das Kapital (Marx), 21, 22n Datum and intuition, 317 Santayana on, 62, 168 and Strong, 167 Daudet, Léon his books, 163 identified, 163n Davis, Charles P. is Catholic, 321–22 his French, Santayana critiques, 45 identified, 46n on The Last Puritan, 374–75 The Last Puritan, Santayana does not send, 321–22 letter(s) to, 45, 85, 166, 298, 321, 374 mentioned, xiii–xiv Davos (Switzerland), 309 De Anima (Aristotle), 324, 325 Death Santayana on, 25 as the totality of life, 178 Death in the Afternoon (Hemingway), 189, 189n De Bello Gallico ( Julius Caesar), 75, 78n De Casseres, Benjamin Exhibitionism: A New Theory of Evolution, 300, 300n identified, 300n letter(s) to, 300, 368 and Maya, 300 Santayana’s letters to, 368 his writing, Santayana on, 300, 368, 378 mentioned, 300
Index The Decline and Rise of the Consumer: A Philosophy of Consumer Cooperation (Kallen), 382–83, 383n The Decline of the West (Spengler), 31n Deland, Margaret Campbell identified, 70n mentioned, 70 The Delphic Club. See Delta Phi Club Delta Phi Club (Harvard) The Last Puritan, Santayana sends copy of, 268 Obiter Scripta, Santayana sends copy of, 268 Phillips, member of, 395 Santayana on, 289 The Works of George Santayana, Santayana sends copy of, 394 mentioned, xix, 179, 186, 196 Democritus identified, 62n “the laughing philosopher,” xlix Santayana on, 61 and The Stranger, 61 Den siste Puritanen. En minneas roman (trans. Ahlberg), 338, 339 Der letzte Puritaner. Die Geschichte eines tragischen Lebens (trans. Laporte and Grote), xxv, 234n, 412, 423, 424, 426 Der Verstandege tod; eine Untersuchung zu Martin Heideggers existenzial-Ontologie (Sternberger), 137, 137n Der Zauberberg (Mann) Santayana on, 309 mentioned, 309 Descartes, René identified, 138n Santayana on, 137 mentioned, xlii, 238, 426 De Selincourt, Basil identified, 64n reviews Eliot, 92 mentioned, 63 The Destructive Element: A Study of Modern Writers and Beliefs (Spender), 213, 214n, 220 Dewey, John and American humanists, 41 identified, 18n and Marx, 21–22 his naturalism, 370 “Santayana’s Novel,” 369, 371
571
mentioned, 17, 122 “Dewey’s Naturalistic Metaphysics” (Santayana), 158, 159n, 408 The Dial ( journal), 377, 378, 378n, 409 Dialogue on George Santayana (ed. Lamont), lxiv Dialogues in Limbo (Santayana) “The Secret of Aristotle,” 127, 128n mentioned, 45, 48, 61, 78, 127, 297, 343, 351, 394n Dickens, Charles Cheeryble brothers, 307, 307n identified, 307n Nicholas Nickleby, 307, 307n mentioned, 307 Dickinson, Goldsworthy Lowes, xlvii Dictionary of American Biography, 440 Dino. See Rigacci, Dino “The Dioscuri: Two Interludes” (Santayana), 31n Discours du Maréchal Franchet d’Espèrey et réponse de M. Abel Bonnard (d’Espèrey), 216–17, 217n The Divine Comedy (Dante), 85 Dobrée, Bonamy and “Bishop Berkeley,” 230, 276, 277, 311–12, 325, 329, 352, 353, 355, 411, 417, 418 From Anne to Victoria: Essays by Various Hands, 229, 229n, 236, 311–12, 329, 352, 355, 411, 417 identified, 229n letter(s) to, 229, 277, 311, 417 Dolomites (Italian mountain range), 37 Dominations and Powers (Santayana), xi, xvii, xix, 96, 99, 102, 103, 106, 108, 112, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123, 132, 133, 140, 140n, 144, 151, 152, 154, 156, 157n, 165, 175, 205, 301–2, 303n, 314, 329, 388, 396, 412 Domus Spinozana, lix, 3, 14, 148–49, 394 Don Carlos, 173n Don Carlos (Verdi), 172, 173n Don Giovanni (Mozart), 156, 157n, 172 Don Quixote de la Mancha (Cervantes), 20n, 170 Dorset Essays (Powys), 262n Dos Passos, John Roderigo The 42nd Parallel, 154n identified, 154n mentioned, 153
572
The Letters of George Santayana
Dowd, David J., Jr. (unidentified) letter(s) to, 362 Drunk’s Exercise Club (Delta Phi Club), xix, 185, 186n “Dr. Whitehead on Perception” (Cory), 10–11, 11n Ducasse, Curt John Causation and the Types of Necessity, 101, 101n identified, 100n letter(s) to, 100 “On the Attributes of Material Things,” 100, 100n his philosophy, Santayana on, 101 mentioned, xvii “Due ‘Selections’ filosofiche di George Santayana” (Losacco), 143n “The Dumb Ox: A Study of Ernest Hemingway” (Lewis), 96, 97n Duncan-Jones, A. E., editor of Analysis, 88n Dunn, Robert Steed Horizon Fever, 331, 331n, 332–33 identified, 331n letter(s) to, 331 Santayana on, 331 Duron, Jacques and essences, 114, 385 identified, 85n La Pensée de George Santayana: Santayana en Amérique, 85, 85n and The Realm of Truth, 382, 384–85 and Rockefeller Fellowship, 85, 338 Santayana on, xxiv, 382, 384–85 and Santayana’s works, xvii, 338–39 visits Santayana, xxiv, 380, 382
“Earliest Verses of George Santayana” (Santayana’s poetry manuscript), 410, 410n Earth Is Enough: An Essay in Religious Realism (Brownell), 105, 105n Eastman, Max Forrester Art and the Life of Action, 188, 189n and bull fighting, 189 and the comic universe, 409 Enjoyment of Laughter, 408, 409n Enjoyment of Living, 189n Enjoyment of Poetry, 189n identified, 189n letter(s) to, 188, 408
his writing, Santayana on, 408–9 mentioned, xvii Economics, Santayana on, 39, 44, 74, 79, 83, 132, 133, 139–40, 169, 172, 182, 305n, 314 Eddington, Arthur Stanley identified, 78n New Pathways in Science, 213, 214n mentioned, 76 Eden, Robert Anthony identified, 249n Santayana on, xxii, 251 mentioned, 249, 298 “The Editing of Historical Documents” (Tanselle), 431, 441n Edman, Irwin identified, 65n and The Last Puritan, 240 The Philosophy of Santayana: Selections from the Works of George Santayana, 78, 79, 79n, 90, 141, 142, 211, 219, 228, 229, 232, 241, 276, 412–13, 426 Santayana on, 219, 276 Some Turns of Thought, reviews, 64 travel plans, 229, 229n his writing, Santayana on, 426 mentioned, lvii, lviii, 79, 83, 128 Education and the Social Order (B. Russell), 24n Edward VIII, king of England, xxv Edwards, Jonathan The Freedom of the Will, 292n identified, 292n mentioned, 291 Egotism in German Philosophy (Santayana), 127, 257, 329, 349, 352, 407, 408, 408n Einstein, Albert, and The World As I See It, 213, 214n “The Elderly Mind of Early America” (Santayana, unpublished), 396 Elements, Santayana on, 113 Eliot, Charles William and Harvard University, 251 identified, 252n Santayana on, xxii mentioned, 360 Eliot, T[homas] S[tearns] After Strange Gods, 92n and Cory, liv–lv, 144, 145n, 219, 288 De Selincourt’s review on, 92
Index and The Destructive Element: A Study of Modern Writers and Beliefs, 220 his Harvard lectures, 67, 71, 92 and humanism, 122 identified, 20n Murder in the Cathedral, 213, 214n and the New Criterion, liv,106 his poetry, 63, 72 review of, 96 and Santayana, 151 Santayana on, 92, 144, 213 Santayana’s review of, 272, 273, 287–88, 329, 340, 359 Selected Essays, 272, 273n on Shakespeare’s philosophy, 20 The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, 62, 63, 63n his writing, Santayana on, 72 Elizabeth and Her German Garden (M. Russell), 36n, 254, 291, 296 Elliott & Fry, and Santayana’s photograph, 211 El último puritano; memoria en forma de novela (trans. Baeza), 356, 356n Emerson, Ralph Waldo The Dial, editor of, 154n identified, 154n Nature, 154n mentioned, 153, 300, 368 Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 440 Engels, Friedrich identified, 22n mentioned, 21 England and Anglomania, 153, 249, 267 critics, Santayana on English, 144 Edward VIII, king of, xxv the English Church, 43 the English language, 153 English people, Cory on, 283 English people, Santayana on, 273, 283 English revolution, 401 English school life, book on, 241 High Wycombe, Santayana’s spelling of, 214, 214n, 216 philosophy, Santayana on English, 88, 137 poets, Santayana on English, 63 the pound, xv, 139–40 realism, Santayana on English, 88 Santayana, does not return to, 96
573
Santayana and products from, 257 Santayana gives lectures in, 284 Santayana on, xxii, 213, 249, 251, 252–53, 254, 267n, 284, 330, 397 Santayana’s reputation in, 405 Santayana’s time in, 194, 284, 289, 313, 330 the Simpson affair, xxv, 424, 424n Enjoyment of Laughter (Eastman), Santayana on, 408 Enrichetta (Strong’s servant), 104, 104n Epicurus Epicureanism, 281, 282n, 297 identified, 282n mentioned, 378, 382 Erasmus, Desiderius identified, 38n and religion, 378 mentioned, 37 Erman, Adolph A Handbook of Egyptian Religion, 174, 175n identified, 175n Erskine, John “Crusades for Common Sense,” 45, 46 identified, 46n Some Turns of Thought, reviews, 47 mentioned, 79 Escalera, Mercedes de la address given to Santayana, 389, 390, 414 her allowance, 58, 74, 82, 89, 381, 388–89, 390, 397–98 in Bayona in Galicia (Spain), 363 her finances, 82, 388–89, 397–98, 416 her home address, 381, 389, 389n identified, 59n legacy from Josephine, 89 Santayana sends money, xxv, 390, 399, 414 and Santayana’s will, xxiii, 265, 272, 278, 279, 334, 414, 414n Spain, and political situation in, 363 mentioned, 386 Espèrey, Louis Félix Marie Francois d’ Franchet Discours du Maréchal Franchet d’Espèrey et réponse de M. Abel Bonnard, 216–17, 217n, 218 identified, 217n his writing, Santayana on, 216–17
574
The Letters of George Santayana
Essai sur la formation de la pensée grecque (Schuhl), 213, 214n Essays in Critical Realism (ed. Drake), 15, 16n Essays on the Natural Origin of the Mind (Strong), 23, 24n Essence aesthetic, 326 and Duron, 385 and Heidegger, xlii, 136 and intuition, 101 and The Last Puritan, 256 and Le Boutillier, 426 and Moore, 269 and naturalism, 370 as passive forms, xlii and B. Russell, 268 Santayana on, xlii, 54–55, 92–93, 96, 97, 100, 113, 114, 163, 173, 317, 324, 349, 420 and sense-data, 327 and space, 100, 101 and spirit, 264 and time, 100, 101 and truth, 164 mentioned, 167, 298 “The Ethical Doctrine of Spinoza” (Santayana), 3n Ethics, xliv Evan Harrington (Meredith), 173n Exhibitionism: A New Theory of Evolution (De Casseres), 300, 300n Experience, Santayana on, 25, 96, 97, 351, 354 Eyeless in Gaza (A. Huxley), 375, 376n
Faith, Santayana on, 297 The Faith Healer (Moody), 154n “The Fall of the House of Usher,” (Poe), 154n Farliss, Professor (unidentified), 281, 282n Fascism, lvi, lxiii, 43, 116, 381, 386 Faulkner, William Sanctuary, 350, 351n, 375, 379, 401 his writing, Santayana on, 350–51, 379, 401 Faust (Goethe), 33, 33n, 61, 62n, 146 Feeling, Santayana on, 100, 264 “A Few Remarks” (Santayana), 158, 159n, 329, 388 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, xlii
Ficke, Arthur Davis, lix The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Class of ’86 and the Three Hundredth of the College, 256 First Principles (Spencer), 221, 221n Fisher, Saint John identified, 214n a martyr, 213 Santayana on, 213 “The Flight of Helen: A Fragment” (Santayana), 31n The Flowering of New England, 1815–1865 (Brooks), 377, 377n Flux, Santayana on, 317 Fonction fabulatrice, 27, 28n, 123, 128 Forbes, William Cameron “Cam” identified, 260n The Last Puritan, the homicide in, 225n, 270, 271 and Oliver Alden, 259, 270 relationship with father, 270 Forbes, William Hathaway identified, 271n relationship with son, 270 Forbes-Robertson, Johnston identified, 173n mentioned, 172 Form, Santayana on, 117 Fortescue, Lady (unidentified), visits Santayana, 73, 82 The 42nd Parallel (Dos Passos), 154n “Fragment from Catullus” (Santayana), 142 France political situation in, 358, 363, 375 Santayana on, 252 Franco, Francisco, xxv, 361n, 364n, 376n, 377n Freedman, Louis Alexander “The Cry of the Bull from Beyond: What Have I Done to Them?,” 182, 182n identified, 182n letter(s) to, 182 his poetry, Santayana on, 182 preface to book, Santayana does not write, 182 Roses Green, Roses Black: Verse Rimed, Verse Unrimed, Rhythmic Prose, 182n Simple Insanities: Reflection in Rime, 182n Freedom Versus Organization, 1814–1914 (B. Russell), Santayana on, 148 Freemasonry, 401, 402n
Index “Free Will as Involving Determination and Inconceivable Without It” (Miller), 93 French Academy, 259 French Comtist positivism, 26 French Herriot Party, 27, 28n French Revolution, 401 Freud, Sigmund Freudian, 227 identified, 227n mentioned, 422 From Anne to Victoria: Essays by Various Hands (ed. Dobrée), 229, 229n, 236, 311–12, 329, 352, 355, 411, 417 Fuller, Benjamin Apthorp Gould “Bags,” lx Fullerton, William Morton identified, 300n and Paris, 300 mentioned, xlviii Funk, Charles Earle identified, 126n letter(s) to, 126 and Santayana’s name, 126
Gardiner, Robert Hallowell, Jr. identified, 279n Santayana, gives money to, 278 and Santayana’s will, 279 mentioned, 292 Garfield, Harry Augustus, 31n Garfield, James Abram identified, 31n and Santayana, 29 Garfield, James Rudolph, 31n Gautama, Siddhartha. See Buddha The Genteel Tradition at Bay (Santayana), 48, 65, 106, 107, 122 George, Saint, 367 George Santayana (Howgate), xiii, lxiv, 30n, 31n George Santayana: A Biography (McCormick), xlv, lxiv George Santayana’s Marginalia: A Critical Selection (McCormick, forthcoming), 429 German(s) idealism, 107 morality, 107 and war, 190 Germany and “intellectual barbarism,” 400
575
Santayana, graduate student in, xli, xlv Santayana on, 252, 375, 400 Gielgud, Arthur John identified, 173n Shakespearean actor, 172, 261 Glanvill, Joseph identified, 124n The Vanity of Dogmatizing, 123, 124n “Glimpses of Old Boston” (Santayana), 30, 142 Glion-sur-Montreux (Switzerland) political situation in, 363 Santayana on, 372, 374, 380, 397 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Faust, 33, 33n, 61, 62n, 146 identified, 62n Wilhelm Meister, 170, 170n Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, 170n Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, 170n mentioned, 61, 151, 259 Goetz, George. See Victor Francis Calverton The Golden Day (Mumford), lxi, lxv Government, Santayana on, 354, 375 The Great Divide (Moody), 154n Green, Dr. (Santayana’s doctor), 12 Gregory, Alyse (Mrs. Llewelyn Powys), The Dial, managing editor of, 262n, 378 Gross, Mr. (unidentified) letter(s) to, 308 Guyot, Raymond and the French Herriot Party, 27, 28n identified, 28n La Révolution Française, 27, 28n his writing, Santayana on, 27
Halliday, Richard identified, 203n The Last Puritan, and the film rights for, 203, 220 Hamilton, William identified, 264n mentioned, 264 “Hamlet” (Santayana), 31, 359 Hamlet (Shakespeare), 104, 104n, 172, 231, 232n, 362 A Handbook of Egyptian Religion (Erman), Santayana on, 174, 175n Harvard Fund Council, 13 Harvard Lampoon, xlvi
576
The Letters of George Santayana
Harvard Register, 73 Harvard Tercentenary, 186, 190 Harvard Theological Review ( journal), 148n The Harvard Union The Last Puritan, Santayana sends, 268 Obiter Scripta, Santayana sends, 268 Harvard University The American Institute of 1770, 174, 175n Class of 1886, 330–31, 343 commencement, Santayana invited to, 190 Conant, president of, xix, 102, 190, 302, 303n Delta Phi Club, xix, 179, 186n, 196, 289, 394, 395 Doctor of Letters, offered to Santayana, xix, 302 Drunk’s Exercice Club (Delta Phi Club), xix, 185, 186n, 289 C. Eliot, president of, xxii, 251, 252n T. S. Eliot’s lectures at, 67, 71, 92 Harvard College Chapel and The Last Puritian, 224, 347 Harvard Fund Council, 13 Harvard Lampoon, xlvi Harvard Library, 394 Harvard Register, 73 Harvard Yard, 343, 392, 393, 394, 425 Hasty Pudding Club, xlvi, 174, 175n Houghton Library, 432 life at, 196–97 Lowell, president of, lx The New Frontier ( journal), 133 and the Philosophical Club, xlvi philosophy department, 10 photographs of, 359–60 poets at, 153, 306 Royce, professor at, 183 and Santayana, 224, 359, 359–60, 384, 393, 425 Santayana his class, 256 his class portrait, 425, 426n his class reunion, 186 his education at, 13, 14n fellowship, gives 102, 125, 334 his last lecture at, 285, 285n professor at, xxiii, xli, lx–lxi, 86, 191, 330 retirement from, lix, lx, lxi
does not return, 185 The Secret Society, 224 Strong’s fellowship, 236, 238 Tercentenary Celebration, xix, 186, 190 Zeta Psi Club, 90, 90n mentioned, 16, 92, 120, 194, 271, 288, 347, 420 Harvard Yard, 343, 392, 393, 394, 425 Hasty Pudding Club (Harvard), xlvi, 174, 175n Heaven, Santayana on, 178 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich identified, 55n mentioned, 55 Heidegger, Martin Cruz y Raya, article in, 55, 70, 137 and essences, xlii Hegelian, Santayana considers a, 55 Husserl, pupil of, 136 identified, 55n and ontology, 136 Santayana on, xlii, 137 Sein und Zeit (Being and Time), xviii, 55n, 136, 146 his works, influences Santayana, 302 mentioned, 70, 136, 149, 152, 178 Heimsath, Charles Herman identified, 192n quotes Santayana, 192 With Honor, 192n Hemingway, Ernest Miller Death in the Afternoon, 189, 189n identified, 97n mentioned, 96 The Hermit of Carmel (Santayana), 329 Herriot, Édouard, 28n Hicks, George Dawes identified, 65n Some Turns of Thought, reviews, 64 Hinduism, 300, 301 History of Sandford and Merton: A Work Intended for the Use of Children (Day), 194, 195n Hitler, Adolf identified, 400n Santayana’s opinion of, 400 mentioned, 400 Hobart, R. E. See Miller, Dickinson Hobbes, Thomas identified, 117n Leviathan, 117n
Index mentioned, 116 Hollywood Publishers, 330 Holmes, Pauline letter(s) to, 192 A Tercentenary History of the Boston Public Latin School, 1635–1935, 193, 193n Holt, Edwin Bissell, 270n Holzberger, William Complete Poems, lxiv, 46, 409, 432 and Santayana’s correspondence, 432, 433, 434 Hood, Frederic Clark identified, 256n mentioned, 256 Hook, Sidney American Philosophy, Today and Tomorrow, 269–70, 270n “Communism without Dogmas,” 116, 117n identified, 22n letter(s) to, 21, 116, 269 and materialism, 117 his philosophy, Santayana on, 269–70 and Platonic Realism, 269 on Santayana, 116 Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx, 21, 22n “What is Materialism?,” 116, 117n his writing, Santayana on, 22 mentioned, lvii, 140 Horizon Fever (Dunn), 331, 331n, 333 Hotel(s) Aragno (Rome), 180, 299 Europa (Cortina d’Ampezzo), 130 expenses, Santayana on, xv, 58, 205, 370, 372 Flora (Rome), 165 Florian’s (Venice), 134 Grand Hotel (Venice), 134 guests, Santayana on, 44, 371 Hotel Bristol (Rome), xv, xviii, xxv, 39, 48, 49, 54, 58, 101, 137, 145, 165, 188, 244, 245, 280, 294, 306, 342, 345, 374, 380, 391, 403 Hotel Bristol, Santayana on, xxiv, 176, 385, 423 Hotel Danieli (Venice), 45, 47, 49, 130, 134, 215, 234 Hotel Miramonti (Cortina d’Ampezzo), 13, 35, 37, 39, 44, 124, 130, 188, 199, 204, 215, 286
577
Hotel Savoia (Cortina d’Ampezzo), 197, 199, 204, 286 Hotel Savoy (Paris), 305, 337, 339, 341, 348 Hotel Savoy, Santayana on, xxiv, 339, 341, 345, 346 Minerva (Italy), 15 Princes’ Hotel (Italy), 15 Roma Hotel (Rome), 44, 150, 299, 403, 404 Santayana on, 130, 341–42 Houghton Library (Harvard University), 430 Housman, A[lfred] E[dward] identified, 421n Last Poems, 419, 421n More Poems, 419, 421n his sexuality, lxiv A Shropshire Lad, 419, 421n mentioned, l, lii Howard, Adelaide (Mrs. Baker Brownell) identified, 105n letter(s) to, 105 Howard, John Galen, xlvi Howgate, George Washburne George Santayana, xiii, lxiv, 30n, 31n identified, 30n letter(s) to, 28 Santayana’s bibliography, 28, 48, 127 Humanism, Santayana and, 370 Humanism and America: Essays on the Outlook of Modern Civilisation (ed. Foerster), 73n Humanities Research Center (University of Texas, Austin), lxiv, 219, 432 Hume, David identified, 93n mentioned, 92 Hungary, 364 Husserl, Edmund Heidegger’s teacher, 136 identified, 137n Santayana on, 137 Husted, Wayne Joseph (unidentified), xxv, 424 Huxley, Aldous Leonard Brave New World, 97n Eyeless in Gaza, 375, 376n identified, 97n Point Counter Point, xx, 206, 207n Santayana on, 96
578
The Letters of George Santayana
Huxley, Julian identified, 123n mentioned, 123 Hypnotism, Santayana on, 400 “Hypostatic Ethics” (Santayana), 30n
Idealism, Santayana on, 317 The Idea of a World University (Ward), 164n The Idea of Christ in the Gospels (Santayana), 136, 137n, 151 Ideas, Santayana on, xlii, 111 The Illusion of Immortality (Lamont), 178, 179n Images, Santayana on, 19, 350–51 Images and Shadows: Part of a Life (Origo), xii Imaginary Portraits (Pater), 36, 36n Immanence, Santayana on, 50 Immediate experience, Santayana on, 324 Immortality, Santayana on, 178 Individuality, Santayana on, 139 “The Indomitable Individual” (Santayana), 329, 388, 388n, 411 Industrialism, Santayana on, xii–xiii Ingersoll, Henrietta Auchmity Sturgis her family, Santayana on, xxiii, 318–19 identified, 320n and The Last Puritan, 346 letter(s) to, 318 Susan stays with, 318 mentioned, 366 In potentia, Santayana on, 324 Intellect, Santayana on, 316, 323, 324, 326 Intent, Santayana on, 316, 324, 326, 327 Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (Santayana), 359, 396n “Introduction to Hamlet” (Santayana), 31n Intuition and essence, 101 Santayana on, xlii, 168, 264, 316, 324, 326, 419 Irving, Henry mentioned, 172 identified, 173n Islam, Santayana on, 116–17 Italian Platonizing poets, xli Italy and the Abyssinian War, xxii, 217, 244, 250, 251 American Consulate in, 395 Americans in, 313
and fascisim, lxiii Italians, Santayana on, 217, 257, 267n, 273 League of Nations, sanctions imposed by, xxii, 230, 244, 254, 257, 267n, 304n the lira, xiii, xv, 389, 391, 397, 403 newspapers in, 375 Parma, 13, 13–14n Phillips, American ambassador to, 392, 392n, 395 Po River, 13, 13n political situation in, 263, 273, 286, 345, 416 Santayana on, 13, 257, 375, 392 Santayana on living in, 267n, 273, 313 Spanish Consulate in, 395 mentioned, 251, 376 I Tatti (Berensons’ villa), 17, 17n
Jahn, Aegidius identified, 244n quotes Santayana, 244, 244n The Silver World: An Essay on the Ultimate Problems of Philosophy, 244n James, Henry and the destructive element, 220–21 and The Destructive Element: A Study of Modern Writers and Beliefs, 220 identified, 221n his novels, 220 quote from, 255 mentioned, xlvii, xlix, lii, lxiv James, Saint, 367 James, William and Character and Opinion in the United States, 94 identified, 33n Pragmatism, 33n Principles of Psychology, 33n, 142n Santayana reviews, 141 Santayana’s letters to, 33, 141 mentioned, 41, 41n, 153, 343 Janus (Roman god), 413, 413n Janus, Christopher George identified, 405n letter(s) to, 405 and Santayana’s philosophy, 413, 422–23 visits Santayana, 405, 413, 422
Index The Jasmine Farm (M. Russell), 82, 83n, 167 Jay, Louisa “Loulie” Barlow, (Mrs. Pierre Jay), 332, 333n Jesus, 76, 297n, 308, 369 Jews, lvii–lviii, lxiii, 364 John of the Cross, Saint, xx, 220, 227, 251 Johnson, Samuel identified, 5n mentioned, 4 John the Baptist, Saint, 330 Jones, Henry Dixon, 360, 361n Journal of Philosophy “The Critique of Pragmatism,” 30n “Hypostatic Ethics,” 30n “Naturalism and Agnosticism in Santayana,” 61, 62n “On the Attributes of Material Things,” 100, 100n “The Realism of Common Sense,” 57n “Russell’s Philosophical Essays,” 28, 30n Santayana’s articles, 28 Strong’s articles, 9, 226 “The Study of Essence,” 30n “What is Materialism?,” 116, 117n mentioned, 236 Judaism, Santayana on, lvii–lviii, lxiii
Kallen, Horace Meyer American Philosophy, Today and Tomorrow, 269–70, 270, 270n The Decline and Rise of the Consumer: A Philosophy of Consumer Cooperation, 382–83, 383n identified, 22n letter(s) to, 132 his philosophy, 132 Santayana’s pupil, lviii his writing, Santayana on, 382–83 mentioned, xlvii, lvi, lxv, 22, 141, 154 Kant, Immanuel Critique of Judgment, 107n Critique of Practical Reason, 107n Critique of Pure Reason, 107n identified, 107n and morality, 107 and the Unconditioned, 264 mentioned, xlii Keddy, A Story of Oxford (Dickinson), 194, 195n
579
Keedick, Mr. Lee (unidentified), 315 Keene, Mr. (unidentified), 178 Keyser, Cassius Jackson identified, 179n mentioned, 178 Kierkegaard, Søren, xlii King’s College (Cambridge, England) Obiter Scripta, Santayana sends copy of, 268, 360 “King’s College Chapel” (Santayana), 360, 361n Knox, John, xlix Komroff, Manuel identified, 211n letter(s) to, 210 and Santayana’s works, 210 Kyllmann, Otto and “A Brief History of My Opinions,” 194 identified, 3n and The Last Puritan, xx, 152, 158, 160, 183, 184, 185, 186, 191, 192, 198, 201, 202, 204, 205, 208, 218, 220, 222, 224, 226, 228, 230, 230n, 231, 232, 233, 237, 245, 250, 275, 284, 328, 345 letter(s) to, 3, 157, 160, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 192, 194, 198, 202, 204, 205, 208, 218, 222, 226, 230, 231, 233, 244, 245, 250, 257, 275, 276, 283, 286, 328, 373 and Obiter Scripta, 184, 373 and Poems, 3 Santayana, and requests to translate, 286–87 and Santayana’s background, 194 mentioned, 159, 436, 439
La Favola d’Orfeo (Monteverdi) Santayana attends, 6, 6n Lamb, Charles identified, 18–19n mentioned, 18 Lamont, Corliss Delphic Club, member of, 179, 179n Dialogue on George Santayana, edited, lxiv identified, 179n The Illusion of Immortality, 178, 179n letter(s) to, 178 mentioned, xvii, 93
580
The Letters of George Santayana
Lamprecht, Sterling Power identified, 62n letter(s) to, 61, 201, 240 “Naturalism and Agnosticism in Santayana,” 61, 62n and “Ultimate Religion,” 201, 241 his writing, Santayana on, 61 mentioned, xvii, 434 Lane, Philip (unidentified), 197 Lao Tzu identified, 401n Tao te ching, 400, 401n La Pensée de George Santayana: Santayana en Amérique (Duron), 85, 85n La Pensée et le mouvant (Bergson), 123, 123n, 131 Lapsley, Gaillard Thomas Harvard man, 42 identified, 421n La Révolution Française (Guyot), 27, 28n La Rose, Pierre de Chaignon identified, 406n Lucifer, 406, 406n Larrabee, Harold Atkins American Philosophical Association, 93, 93n identified, 93n letter(s) to, 93 Larremendi, Maria (unidentified), 89 Last Poems (Housman), 420, 420n The Last Puritan (Santayana) and American life, 424 Austin Darnley, 158, 158n, 222, 223, 259, 288, 313 Beal on, xxi the Black Swan, 4, 32n, 271, 275 book jacket, 231, 233–34, 237, 237n, 250, 250n, 284, 285n, 286, 289 and the Book-of-the-Month Club, xxi, 237, 238, 239–40, 241, 243, 250, 263, 265, 278, 298, 301, 314, 322, 333, 337, 365, 399, 417–18 Bosso on, 302 Caleb Wetherbee, 151, 151n, 176 Canadian edition, 200, 200n, 201, 250, 333, 345 Canby’s review of, 291, 292n Caroline Van de Weyer, 313, 313n and Catholicism, 321–22 characters in, xiii, xxi, xxiii, 135, 151, 157, 249, 296, 298, 313, 332
Clemens on, 310 is a college story, 291 copies of, 185, 229, 231, 232, 234–35, 244, 245, 253, 265, 267, 268, 319, 346, 423 copies sold, 243, 298, 323, 325–26, 328, 333, 345, 365, 367, 372, 375, 399, 404 Cory on, xiii Cousin Hannah, 333, 333n and critics, xxi, 229, 240, 243, 250, 260, 273, 276, 296, 298–99, 313, 332 Davis on, 374–75 Der letzte Puritaner. Die Geschichte eines tragischen Lebens, xxv, 233, 234n, 411, 422, 4234 425 Dewey on, 369 D.K.E. (secret society), 224, 225n Edgar Thornton, 291 Edith Van de Weyer, 253, 254n, 287, 291 “Epilogue,” 87, 135, 156, 208, 240, 296 errata, 32, 156, 172–73, 175, 185, 187, 198, 218, 219, 226, 230, 232, 233, 237–38, 238, 238n, 242, 242n, 244, 245, 246n, 246–47, 252, 275, 283, 328, 341, 366 errors in printing, 202–3, 203, 204, 205, 205–6, 206, 212, 244, 275, 283, 286 Harriet Alden, 91, 208, 220, 288, 296, 307, 336 Harvard College Chapel, the fictitious murder in, 224, 225n, 347 “In the Home Orbit,” 87n Irma Schlote, xxi, 36, 36n, 255, 260, 271, 283, 296, 307, 313 James “Jim” Darnley, xxi, 32, 220, 222, 223, 223n, 253, 254, 255, 260, 263, 271, 288, 291, 296, 306, 313, 355 James Van de Weyer, 291 “Last Pilgrimage,” 103n The Late George Apley, Santayana compares with, 416, 418 Letitia Lamb, 208, 208n, 333 letter regarding, 327 MacCarthy’s review of, 254, 256, 298 manuscript of, 35, 53, 160, 161, 183, 184, 188, 191, 198, 199, 205, 219, 219n Mario Van de Weyer, 5, 5n, 18, 34, 36, 44, 63, 91, 157, 206, 222, 225, 253, 254, 255, 263, 288, 289, 313
Index Martha Turner, 271 Minnie Bowler, 220, 221n, 223 motion-picture rights, 203, 253, 330 motto for, 255, 256n Mrs. Austin Darnley, 91, 92n, 166, 223, 296 names in, xx, 187, 208, 215, 218, 220, 222, 223, 224, 226, 228, 229, 230n, 270–71 Nathaniel Alden, 224, 333n, 347 Oliver Alden, 29, 35, 63, 63n, 91, 151, 157, 166, 173, 176, 194, 220, 224, 234, 249, 253, 254, 259, 270, 271, 275, 284, 287, 288, 289, 290, 291, 297, 306, 308, 313, 314, 321–22, 327, 337, 347, 355, 362, 369 Peter Alden, 32n, 35, 263, 288, 291, 308, 333n, 336, 347, 418 Phelps on, 296–97 preface for, 328, 344, 349, 356, 362, 365, 417 price of, 200, 201, 201n the printing of, Santayana on, 284 profits from, 310 “Prologue,” 87, 197, 198, 202, 203, 204, 205, 205–6, 212, 240, 308 proofs of, 188, 190, 197, 198, 199, 200, 203, 204, 205, 205–6, 212, 215, 218, 219, 220, 224, 226, 226n, 232, 243, 244 publication of, xii, xviii, xx–xxi, 135, 152, 161, 166, 183, 187, 190, 191, 192, 199, 204, 211, 223, 225, 230, 232, 234, 235, 240, 248, 332 and religion, 202 reviews of, xxi, lxiv, 250, 250n, 252, 253, 254, 263, 273, 288, 295, 298, 301, 302, 309, 311, 316, 322, 328, 369 revisions of, xix, 135, 136, 144, 150, 151, 160, 161, 164, 165, 170, 176, 177, 183 Robin Fulleylove, 222, 223n Roscoe C. Lunt, 224, 225n, 291 Rose Darnley, 223, 224n, 249 253, 296, 343 M. Russell on, xxi, 255, 260, 296 and the Saint Felix School, 280–81 sale of, 212n, 397 Santayana finishes, xviii, 135, 138, 145, 149, 157, 160, 166 Santayana on, xii, 32, 35–36, 73, 90, 91,
581
161, 166, 186, 194, 194–95, 200, 220, 222–23, 224–25, 234, 237, 239–40, 245, 253–54, 258, 271, 291, 296, 298, 309, 314, 321–22, 326, 332–33, 347, 355, 362, 374–75 Santayana quotes, 35 Santayana’s friends on, xxi and Santayana’s philosophy, 281 and Santayana’s portrait, 258, 284, 286, 393 Santayana works on, 4–5, 12, 14–15, 18, 36, 37, 39, 44, 46, 57, 62–63, 69, 72, 81, 87, 88, 96, 98, 103, 118, 119, 121, 128, 131, 132, 133–34 Scribner on, 302 second printing, 278, 283 Smith on, 255 and Stillman Infirmary, 287, 289n Strong on, 5, 200, 259, 321 success of, xxiii Tom Piper, 253 translations of, xxv, 231, 233, 286, 287, 304–5, 335, 338, 356, 375, 411, 422, 424, 425 typescript of, xiii, xix, 191, 192, 196, 203 The Way of All Flesh, compared to, 260, 261 mentioned, xvii, xx, xli, l, 66, 97, 102, 114, 123, 149, 174, 175, 177n, 191, 217, 219, 284, 300, 329, 343, 352, 360, 392, 414 The Late George Apley: A Novel in the form of a Memoir (Marquand), 416, 416n, 418 “The Later Philosophy of Mr. Santayana” (Cory), 151, 151n 152, 317, 316 Latin School Register “The Aeneid,” 29, 193 “The Class of 1882,” 29, 31n “Glimpses of Old Boston,” 30, 142 “President Garfield,” 29, 31n, 193 Lawrence, D[avid] H[erbert] identified, 207n and Point Counter Point, 206, 207n Lawton, George identified, 142n letter(s) to, 142 and Santayana’s works, 141, 142 mentioned, 141 League of Nations, 245, 245n, 249n, 251
582
The Letters of George Santayana
Leavis, Frank Raymond “The Critical Writings of George Santayana,” 272, 273, 276, 280, 282 identified, 106n letter(s) to, 280 Scrutiny, editor of, 106, 288n Leavis, Queenie Dorothy “Q. D.” “The Critical Writings of George Santayana,” 272, 273n, 273, 276, 280, 282 identified, 273n and Santayana’s works, 280 Le Balze (Strong’s villa), xiv, xvi, liv, lxiii, 101, 103, 104, 115, 119, 129, 130, 138, 268 Le Boutillier, Cornelia Geer identified, 426n “Spiritual Life: Santayana’s Approach to Essence,” 426, 426n her writing, Santayana on, 426 Lee, Sidney identified, 361n Life of William Shakespeare, 359, 361n Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm Freiherr von identified, 109n his philosophy, 109, 110, 114 Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich, lxv Leopardi, Giacomo identified, 136n mentioned, 136 Leopardi: A Biography (Origo), xii, xviii, 136, 136n, 137, 142, 239, 240 Le Problème de Jésus et les origenes du Christianisme (Couchoud), 66, 67n L’Erreur de la philosophie allemande (trans. Lerolle and Guentin), 127, 128n, 258 Les Dieux (Alain), xx, 206–7, 207n, 213, 215, 225 Les Deux sources de la morale et de la religion (Bergson), 27n, 28n, 67, 71, 131 The Letters of George Santayana (Cory), 431, 433, 434 The Letters of George Santayana (MIT), 429, 431, 433 Lewis, [Harry] Sinclair identified, 326n mentioned, 325 Lewis, Percy Wyndham “The Dumb Ox: A Study of Ernest Hemingway,” 96, 97n identified, 97n
L’Heure de la décision (Tardieu), 216, 217n Liberal Party (Great Britain), 401, 402n The Liberation of American Literature (Calverton), 152, 154n Librairie Gallimard, 338, 339 Life, Santayana on, 179, 354 Life and Letters ( journal), 30, 31n, 96, 97n, 98n, 122, 132, 142, 159n, 323 The Life of Reason (Santayana), lxi, 45, 61, 106, 256, 329, 343, 354, 357, 369, 373, 393, 394, 394n, 414, 418 Life of reason, Santayana on, xlii, 354–55, 377 The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D (Boswell), 5n Life of William Shakespeare (Lee), 359, 361n “Lines on Leaving the Bedford Street Schoolhouse” (Santayana), 141 L’io nella filosofia germanica (Zampa), 127, 128n Lippmann, Walter identified, 42n and Santayana’s articles, 117 and the Sunday Magazine, 42, 42n mentioned, lvii, 118 “Literal and Symbolic Knowledge” (Santayana), 158, 159n, 351–52, 361n Literary Opinion in America (Zabel), 409, 409 Little, Brown and Company (publisher), 416n, 418 Little Company of Mary. See Blue Sisters Little Essays (ed. Smith), 211, 211n Lloyd George, David identified, 252n mentioned, 251, 252 Locke, John and biological assumptions, 97 identified, 4n his philosophy, Santayana on, 97, 168, 195 Santayana on, 137 Santayana’s address on, 3 “A Study of Locke’s Theory of Ideas,” 95–96 mentioned, 92 “Locke and the Frontiers of Common Sense” (Santayana), 3, 4n, 6, 14, 16, 42, 43, 66, 118n, 148, 284, 285n Lodge, George Cabot identified, 307n and Oliver Alden, 306
Index Loeser, Charles, lix Logos (Greek philosophy), 88, 89n Loisy, Alfred Firmin identified, 26–27n his philosophy, Santayana on, 26 Y a-t-il deux sources de la religion et de la morale, 26, 27n mentioned, 67, 71 “A Long Way Round to Nirvana; or, Much Ado About Dying” (Santayana), 70, 71n, 394n Losacco, Michele “Due ‘Selections’ filosofiche di George Santayana,” 143n identified, 143n letter of introduction, Santayana writes, 143, 144 The Philosophy of Santayana: Selections from the Works of George Santayana, Santayana sends, 412 Love (M. Russell), 251, 252n Love, Santayana on, 362–63 Lovejoy, Arthur Oncken identified, 8n his philosophy, Santayana on, 110 Strong, disagrees with, 70, 84, 85, 110, 111 mentioned, 92 Lowell, Abbott Lawrence, lx, lxiv, 102n Lowell, Charles Russell, Jr., 210n Lowell, Josephine Shaw (Mrs. Charles Lowell, Jr.), 210n Lowell, Robert, xlvii Lubbock, Percy identified, 184n mentioned, 183 Luce, Arthur Aston Berkeley and Malebranche: A Study in the Origins of Berkeley’s Thought, 235, 235n, 236 identified, 235n his writing, Santayana on, 235, 236 Lucia di Lammermoor (Donizetti), xvii, 96, 97n Lucifer, or the Heavenly Truce: A Theological Tragedy (Santayana) and la Rose’s artwork, 406 revised limited edition, 281, 282n, 360–61 Santayana on, 281–82 and The Works of George Santayana, 407 mentioned, 142
583
Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) identified, 371n his naturalism, 370 Luther, Martin identified, 379n and religion, 378 Lyman, Herbert, li Lyon, Richard C., xlii
Macbeth (Verdi), Santayana attends, 6, 6n MacCarthy, Desmond and essences, 256, 298 The Last Puritan, reviews, 254, 256 Life and Letters, 30, 31n, 323 MacHardy, Horatio Victor Muriel, 32, 32n Machiavelli, Niccolò identified, 379n and religion, 378 Malebranche, Nicolas identified, 235n mentioned, 235 Maloney, Father (unidentified), 92 The Man Inside: Being the Record of the Strange Adventures of Allen Steele Among the Xulus (Calverton), 400, 400n “Mãndookya Upanishad” (Yeats), 212–13, 214n Mann, Thomas Der zauberberg, 309, 310n identified, 310n Mansel, Henry Longueville identified, 264n mentioned, 264 “Many Nations in One Empire” (Santayana), 133, 134n, 142, 151 Marejon, Eduardo (Manuela’s doctor), xxv, 390–91, 391n, 398, 415–16 Marichalar, Antonio identified, 44n and The Last Puritan, 231, 286, 287n, 304–5 letter(s) to, 43 Obiter Scripta, Santayana sends copy of, 268 as a reviewer, 89 Santayana on, 287, 304–5n Santayana’s works, translates, 89, 149, 286, 304–5n, 380–81 Spain, and political situation in, 380–81, 386
584
The Letters of George Santayana
Marie (Strong’s Paris servant), Santayana gives money to, 386 Maritain, Jacques Cruz y Raya, article in, 207 identified, 165n Sept leçons sur l’être et les premiers principes de la raison spéculative, 165, 165n Mark Twain Letters (ed. Branch, Frank, Sanderson), 435, 441n Mark Twain Medal, 310, 420, 420n Mark Twain Quarterly ( journal), 420, 420n Marquand, John Phillips identified, 416n The Late George Apley: A Novel in the form of a Memoir, 416, 416n, 418 his writing, Santayana on, 416, 418 mentioned, 416 Marriage and Morals (B. Russell), 24n Marx, Karl and capitalism, 21 Das Kapital, 21, 22n and Dewey, 21–22 his historical materialism, 21 identified, 22n Santayana on, xii–xiii, lxvi, 21 and value, xiii mentioned, 140, 248 Marxians, 169 Materialism, Santayana on, xliii–xliv, 116 Mather, Frank Jewett, Jr. Concerning Beauty, 180, 181n identified, 181n his writing, Santayana on, 180 Matter, Santayana on, xlii, 300 Maya, 300, 301n McCullough, Hugh identified, 307n and Oliver Alden, 306 McDougall, William identified, 113–14n his philosophy, 112 McStout (“Walt Whitman: A Dialouge”), 29, 31n Meaning, Santayana on, 269 Meloney, Marie Mattingly identified, 42n letter(s) to, 42 and the Sunday Magazine, 42 Melville, Herman, and Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 153, 154n Memory, Santayana on, 261, 264
Mencius on the Mind (Richards), 6, 22 Mephistopheles (Faust) , 61, 62n, 146 Meredith, George The Egoist: A Comedy in Narrative, 173n Evan Harrington, 173n identified, 173n mentioned, 172 Merriam, John McKinstry identified, 256n mentioned, 256 Merrill, Moses Boston Public Latin School, headmaster, 193 identified, 193n Santayana on, xlvi Messianism, Santayana on, 26 “Michael” (Cory, unpublished), xx, lv, 206, 207n, 219, 220, 228, 253, 285, 404 Michelangelo (Buonarotti) identified, 394n mentioned, xli, 393 Miller, Dickinson Sargeant America, returns to, 104 his book, 93 and Cory, 9 and Dominations and Powers, xi, xvii, 96, 99, 102, 106, 121 his finances, xi, 48, 54 “Free Will as Involving Determination and Inconceivable Without It,” 93 identified, 8n his lectureship, 9 Mind, article in, 84 Santayana, financial support from, xi, 7, 10, 99, 101, 104 Santayana, offended by, 104 Santayana on, 106, 121 Strong on, xi, 9, 125 his theological position, 48 Mind ( journal), 84, 93, 236 Mind, Santayana on, 195 Minos, 64, 64n Minturn, Susie Shaw, 210n Moby-Dick; or, The Whale (Melville), 153, 154n Modern American Prose (Van Doren), 94n The Modern Library The Philosophy of Santayana: Selections from the Works of George Santayana, 90 mentioned, 78
Index The Modern Monthly ( journal) “Communism without Dogmas,” 116, 117n “Why I Am Not a Marxist,” 140, 140n, 169 mentioned, 139n, 169 Monism, 44 Montaigne, Michel Eyquem Seigneur de identified, 379n and religion, 378 Moody, William Vaughn The Faith Healer, 154n The Great Divide, 154n a Harvard poet, 153 identified, 154n and Oliver Alden, 306 Moore, George Edward and concepts, 269 and essences, 269 identified, 7n Principia Ethica, 7n Santayana, influence on, 269 mentioned, lix, 6 Moore, John G. (unidentified) letter(s) to, 347 Moral freedom, Santayana on, 162, 303 Moralism, and theology, 107 Moral relativism, xlv, lxiv Morals and absolutism, 221 and renunciation, 221 Santayana on, 221 More, Paul Elmer Essai sur la formation de la pensée grecque, reviews, 213 identified, 107n and moralism, 107 his philosophy, Santayana on, 107 More Poems (Housman), 420, 420–21 Morgan, John “Jack” Pierpont, Jr. identified, 186n mentioned, xix, 186 Morison, Samuel Eliot identified, 377n Three Centuries of Harvard 1636–1936, 225n, 377, 377n Morley, Christopher Darlington identified, 290n The Last Puritan, reviews, 288 Santayana on, 288
585
mentioned, 288 The Morning Post, 253 Morris, Mary 271, 271n Moses (Bible), 160 “Mr. Housman at Little Bethel” (Pound), 72n Mumford, Lewis, lxi, lxv Munitz, Milton Karl identified, 371n letter(s) to, 369 “Santayana’s Philosophy,” 369–70, 371n Munson, Gorham Bert identified, 282n letter(s) to, 281 and Lucifer, 281 and poetry, 281 Münsterberg, Hugo identified, 41n mentioned, 41 Murchie, Guy identified, 392n and Oliver Alden, 259 visits Santayana, 391, 392, 395, 398, 399 Murchie, Mrs. Guy, 392, 395, 398, 399 Murder in the Cathedral (Eliot), 213, 214n Murry, John Middleton identified, 207n and Point Counter Point, 206, 207n Mussolini, Benito identified, 129n Santayana on, xv, xix, xxii, 181–82 mentioned, lxiii, 128, 182n Mysticism, Santayana on, 26
The Name and Nature of Poetry (Housman), 72n Napoleon (Bainville), 27, 28n Napoleon I, emperor of France, 28n National Socialist German Workers’ Party. See Nazi Natural faith, Santayana on, 327 Naturalism, xliii–xliv, 44n, 62, 174, 317, 370, 378 “Naturalism and Agnosticism in Santayana” (Lamprecht), 61, 62n “Natural Leadership” (Santayana), 388, 411, 411n Nature (Emerson), 154n Nature, Santayana on, xliv, 170–71
586
The Letters of George Santayana
Nazi (National Socialist German Workers’ Party) Santayana on, xvii–xviii, 116, 424 mentioned, xxii, 117n Neo-Platonists, 123 New Adelphi ( journal), and The Genteel Tradition at Bay, 65, 106 New Criterion ( journal) Eliot, editor of, 41, 72, 106, 152 “The Later Philosophy of Mr. Santayana,” 152, 316 “Mãndookya Upanishad,” 212–13, 214n and Pound’s article, 72 Santayana on, 213–14 Santayana sends to Cory, 212 and Santayana’s works, 152 mentioned, 41n, 317 The New Deal, 69n The New Frontier ( journal) “Many Nations in One Empire,” 133, 142, 151 mentioned, 134n New Hopes for a Changing World (B. Russell), 24n New Pathways in Science (Eddington), 213, 214n The New Republic ( journal) “The Indomitable Individual,” 388 “Natural Leadership,” 388, 411 and Santayana’s writing, 239, 388 mentioned, 118n, 388, 388n “A New Scholasticism” (Santayana), 30n New Statesman and Nation ( journal), review of The Last Puritan, 250, 250n, 252 New York Review of Books, 433 New York Sun (newspaper), 86 New York Times, 299 New York Times Book Review, 229n, 433 Nicholas Nickleby (Dickens), 307, 307n Nickerson, Hoffman identified, 72n mentioned, 72 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm identified, 107n and morality, 107 mentioned, xvii–xviii, l, 178 Nijhoff, Martinus Septimana Spinozana, 14, 17, 28, 34, 42, 63 mentioned, 66, 149
Nouvelle Librairie Nationale (publisher), 258 Nouvelle Revue Française, 338, 339n
Obiter Scripta (ed. Buchler and Schwartz), xvii, 4n, 142–43, 158, 159n, 160, 179, 184, 201–2, 211, 212, 229, 232, 241, 267, 276, 290, 293, 308, 309, 323, 328, 335, 340, 369, 373, 387, 408, 408n, 411, 420 Objects of belief, Santayana on, 324 Onderdonk, Andrew Joseph identified, 235n The Last Puritan, Santayana has sent, 234 Santayana, bequest from, 265 and Santayana’s will, 278, 279, 334, 345, 413 mentioned, lvi, 294 On Reading Shakespeare (Smith), 16, 17n, 18, 19–20 “On Re-Reading Pater” (Smith), 392, 392n “On the Attributes of Material Things” (Ducasse), 100, 100n “On the Origin in Experience of the Notion of a Physical Object” (Cory), 88n, 110, 111 “On the Three Philosophical Poets” (Santayana), 343–44, 344n, 349, 353, 355, 357 “On the Unity of My Earlier and Later Philosophy” (Santayana), 393, 401 Orfeo. See La Favola d’Orfeo Origo, Antonio, xvii, 26n, 99 Origo, Iris Cutting (Mrs. Antonio Origo) death of son, Santayana consoles, xi, 25, 26 identified, 26n Images and Shadows: Part of a Life, xii The Last Puritan, Santayana sends, 231 Leopardi: A Biography, xii, xviii, 136, 136n, 137, 142, 239, 240 letter(s) to, 25 Santayana, has tea with, xvii, 99 mentioned, 395 Ortega y Gasset, José identified, 149n Revista de Occidente ( journal), 149, 149n Spain, and political situation in, 380–81, 381n, 386
Index Otis, Brooks identified, 134n The New Frontier, editor of, 133, 134n, 151 Our Knowledge of the External World (B. Russell), 24n “Overheard in Seville” (Santayana), 158, 159n The Oxford Companion to American Literature, 440 The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 440
Page, David Anathema, editor of, 189, 190n and Boston’s Monarchist Party, 292, 301 identified, 190n letter(s) to, 189, 221, 301 Santayana does not write for, 189–90 mentioned, lxv Paget, Miss (unidentified), 40 Palmer, George Herbert, lix Pantheism, Santayana on, 43–44n Paradiso (Dante), 85, 86n Paris American influence in, 342 Hotel Savoy, xxiv, 339, 341, 345, 346, 348 political situation in, xxiv, 345, 346, 363, 373 Santayana on, xxiv, 351, 380, 391, 397 Strong’s apartment, xlviii Tuileries Gardens, xxiv, 345 mentioned, 194, 305, 337, 339 Parkman, George (father) identified, 225n and The Last Puritan, 224 murdered, 347 Parkman, George (son) his father, 347 and Nathaniel Alden, 347 Parma (Italy), 13, 13–14n Pasiphaë, 64, 64n The Passing of the Gods (Calverton), 139, 139n, 152 Pater, Walter Horatio identified, 36n Imaginary Portraits, 36, 36n “On Re-Reading Pater,” 392, 392n Paul, Saint, 26
587
“Penitent Art” (Santayana), 409, 409n Perception, Santayana on, 168, 264, 316 “Perception and Knowledge” (Cory), 54–55, 55n Percepts, Santayana on, 76 Perkins, Maxwell, 34n Perry, Bernard (unidentified), Santayana on, 289 Perry, Ralph Barton identified, 33n letter(s) to, 33 The Thought and Character of William James, 33, 309, 325, 326n mentioned, 78, 289 Persons and Places (MIT, ed. Holzberger and Saatkamp), lxiv Persons and Places (Santayana), xlv, lii, 314, 321, 360, 384 Peter Abelard, a Novel (Waddell), 233, 234n Phelps, Annabel Hubbard (Mrs. William Phelps) identified, 23n Santayana on, 307 travel plans, xlviii visits Santayana, 23 Phelps, William Lyon “As I Like It” (book column), 306, 307n identified, 23n on The Last Puritan, 296–97, 306 letter(s) to, 37, 194, 296, 306 on Santayana, 297 Santayana, correspondence with, 306 Santayana, friendship with, 297 Santayana on, 307 travel plans, xlviii, 194 visits Santayana, 23 and Yale University, 38 mentioned, xiii–xiv, lxii, 437 Phenomena, Santayana on, 155 Phidias identified, 208n mentioned, 208 Philip II, king of Spain, 172, 173n Philippines, Batang (island), Josefina lived in, 249, 249n Philips’ A.B.C. Pocket Atlas-Guide to London and its Outer Districts, 214, 214n Phillips, William “Billy” Delta Phi Club, member of, 395 identified, 392n Italy, ambassador to, 392, 395
588
The Letters of George Santayana
“Philosophers at Court, from Act IV” (Santayana), 30, 31n Philosophical Essays (B. Russell), 28, 30n “Philosophical Heresy” (Santayana), 352 Philosophy, Santayana on, 27, 57, 173 “The Philosophy of George Santayana” (Ward), 164, 164n The Philosophy of Loyalty (Royce), 183n The Philosophy of Physical Realism (Sellars), 15, 16n, 17, 23 The Philosophy of Santayana: Selections from the Works of George Santayana (ed. Edman), 78, 79, 79n, 90, 141, 211, 219, 228, 229, 232, 241, 276, 412, 425, 426 The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning (Wolfson), 119, 120n Physical Dimensions of Consciousness (Boring), 41, 41n Pictorial experience, Santayana on, 83–84 Pinchetti, Cesare identified, 48n mentioned, xv, 48, 54, 58, 273, 282, 294, 374, 385, 395 Pincio (Rome), 44, 260, 272 Pinsent identified, 41n mentioned, 40 Pius XI, 181, 182n Plato Crito and Socrates, dialogue with, lix his Ideas, 269 Ross on, 12, 12n mentioned, xlii, 26, 116, 123, 325 Platonism, Santayana on, 50 Platonism and the Spiritual Life (Santayana), 48, 349, 352, 393, 394n, 402 Platonists, 324 Poe, Edgar Allan “The Fall of the House of Usher,” 154n identified, 154n The Raven and Other Poems, 154n mentioned, 153 Poems (Santayana) Santayana requests copies, 3 mentioned, xlviii, 3n, 49, 187, 192, 329, 360 Poetry, Santayana on, 155, 182, 193 Poets, Santayana on, 153 Point Counter Point (A. Huxley), xx, 206, 207n
Politics, Santayana on, lvii, 132, 190, 251, 252, 252–53 Po River (Italy), 13, 13n Positivism, 67n Potter, Elizabeth “Lily” Stephens (Mrs. Robert Burnside Potter) identified, 269n The Last Puritan, Santayana sends, 268, 319, 343 Santayana, sketch of, 342–43, 352–53 mentioned, l Potter, Robert Burnside death of, 343 and the Delta Phi Club, 289 identified, 197n mentioned, xlvii, 197, 319 Potter, Warwick and the Delta Phi Club, 289 identified, 197n mentioned, 197, 342 Pound, Ezra Loomis identified, 72n “Mr. Housman at Little Bethel,” 72n Quia Pauper Amavi, 171, 171n his writing, Santayana on, 72 mentioned, 72, 92, 182, 401 Powys, Llewelyn Damnable Opinions, 262n Dorset Essays, 262n identified, 262n letter(s) to, 262, 378 his naturalism, 378 Rats in the Sacristy, 262, 262n and Santayana, 262 his writing, Santayana on, 378 Pragmatism (W. James), 33n Prayer Book, Santayana quotes from, 66, 67n “Preface to a System of Philosophy” (Santayana), 30, 133 A Preface to Metaphysics. See Sept leçons sur l’être et les premiers principes de la raison spéculative Pre-Raphaelitism, 172, 173n “President Garfield” (Santayana), 29, 31n, 141, 193 “The Prestige of the Infinite” (Santayana), 394n Primo de Rivera, Miguel identified, 376n mentioned, 375
Index Principia Ethica (Moore), 7n The Principles of Psychology (W. James), 33n, 142n Principles of Psychology (Spencer), 221, 221n Proust, Marcel identified, 31n Santayana quotes, 323 Proust and Santayana; the Aesthetic Way of Life (Ames), 5n “Proust on Essences” (Santayana), 30, 31n, 158, 159n, 361 Publishing, Santayana on, 180, 182, 402 Puritanism, 308, 347 Putnam, John identified, 320n Santayana on, 336 and Susan, 317, 336 mentioned, 319
Queen, Henry (unidentified), 221 Quia Pauper Amavi (Pound), 171, 171n Quinquennial Catalogue of the Officers and Graduates of Harvard University, 1636–1925, 440 Quito (Ecuador) and intellectual retreats, 148 and von Hagen, 148 mentioned, 149, 149n
Rabelais, François identified, 20n mentioned, 19, 377 Race, Santayana on, lviii Rand, Benjamin identified, 143n mentioned, 143 Randall, John Herman, Jr. and Cory, 95 identified, 95n letter(s) to, 94 visits Santayana, xvii, 94 Randall, Mercedes Irene Moritz (Mrs. John Herman Randall Jr.) identified, 95n Improper Bostonian, 95n letter(s) to, 95 visits Santayana, xvii, 95 Rare Book and Manuscript Library
589
(Columbia University), 439, 441n Rats in the Sacristy (Powys), 262, 262n The Raven and Other Poems (Poe), 154n “The Realism of Common Sense” (Cory), 55–56, 57, 57n, 72, 75–76 The Realm of Essence (Santayana) quote from, 115n mentioned, xlii, 114, 329, 330n, 361, 408 The Realm of Matter (Santayana) and Cory, 125 and G. Russell quote, 50n Santillana on, 311 mentioned, xlii, liv, 61, 329, 330n, 361 The Realm of Spirit (Santayana) “The Natural Distribution of Spirit,” 423, 423n “On Cosmic Animism,” 423, 423n mentioned, xix, xlii, xliv, 37, 205, 206, 209, 210n, 213, 214n, 215, 226–27, 236, 238–39, 240, 240n, 261, 285–86, 329, 330n, 423 The Realm of Truth (Santayana), xix, xlii, 37, 205, 209, 210n, 215, 239, 261, 270, 285, 325, 329, 330n, 332, 371, 380, 382, 384–85, 388, 389, 391–92, 396 Realms of Being (Santayana), xlii, 46, 197, 351, 388, 397 Reason in Common Sense (Santayana), 394n Reason in Science (Santayana), 402 Reason in Society (Santayana), 394n Recherches philosophiques (yearbook), 23, 24n Relativism, xliv Religion and Science (B. Russell), 272, 273n, 292, 317 Religion inward religion, Santayana on, 354–55 Judaism, and Santayana, lvii–lviii, lxiii religious faith, Santayana on, 297 religious feeling, Santayana on, 147 religious institutions, Santayana on, 354 Santayana on, xliii–xliv, 105, 107, 139, 155, 170, 202, 216, 308, 324, 378, 401 scientific approach to, 148 mentioned, 43, 48, 76 Remedia Amoris (Ovid), 5, 5n Reperusals and Re-collections (Smith), 392, 392n Revista de Occidente ( journal), 149, 149n
590
The Letters of George Santayana
The Revolt Against Dualism: An Inquiry Concerning the Existence of Ideas (Lovejoy), 8n “The Revolt of the Nations” (Santayana, unpublished), 396, 401 Richards, I[vor] A[rmstrong] identified, 7n Mencius on the Mind, 6, 11, 22 Richards, Miriam Thayer identified, 337n letter(s) to, 336 Rigacci, Dino (Strong’s servant), xiv, 104, 104n, 108, 129, 136, 403, 438 The Right and the Good (Ross), 12, 12n Rio, Maria Luisa del, 389, 389n Robbins, Julia, 333, 333n The Robbins Library, andObiter Scripta, Santayana sends copy of, 268 Rockefeller, John D. his daughter Elizabeth, lxiv and the Rockefeller Foundation, 85n mentioned, 44 Rockefeller Archive Center, lxiii–lxiv Rockefeller Center, 226 Rockefeller Foundation, its fellowship, 85, 338 Rome Aragno (hotel), 180, 299 Hotel Bristol, xv, xviii, xxiv, xxv, 39, 48, 49, 54, 58, 101, 137, 145, 165, 176, 188, 244, 245, 280, 294, 306, 342, 345, 374, 380, 385, 391, 403, 423 hotels in, lxi Campo Verano Cemetery, lv the Pincio, 44, 260, 272 Roma Hotel, 44, 150, 299, 403, 404 Santayana lives in, xxii, xli, lxi, 266 Santayana on, xxiv, 38, 73, 75, 86, 93, 252, 257, 385 The Seven Hills of Rome, 166, 167n Triton Fountain, xxiv, 351, 352n, 357, 406 Roosevelt, Franklin Delano economics, Santayana on his, 38, 74 identified, 39n and the New Deal, 69n Santayana on, xiv, 43, 59, 169 Roosevelt, Theodore identified, 43n Santayana on, 43 Ropes, Gray, Boyden, & Perkins of Boston,
and Santayana’s royalities, 315 Ropes, James Hardy Harvard Theological Review, 148n identified, 148n his lectures, 147 The Synoptic Gospels, 148n The Text of Acts, 148n his writing, Santayana on, 147–48 Ropes, Mrs. James Hardy, 147 Roses Green, Roses Black: Verse Rimed, Verse Unrimed, Rhythmic Prose (Freedman), 182n Ross, Denman Waldo identified, 361n Santayana, his portrait of, 359, 392, 393, 394 Ross, J. Ellsworth, and The Last Puritan, 330n Ross, William David identified, 12n The Right and the Good, 12, 12n Royal Society of Literature, 3, 6, 14, 118, 118n, 420 Royce, Josiah identified, 183n The Philosophy of Loyalty, 183n Santayana’s professor, 183 The Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 183n The World and the Individual, 183n Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press, Oxford (Hart), 435 Ruskin, John identified, 320n Ruskinian, 336 The Stones of Venice, 318, 320n Russell, Bertrand Arthur William and concepts, 269 and essences, 269 his first wife, 17n Freedom Versus Organization, 1814–1914, 148 identified, 24n Our Knowledge of the External World, 24n Philosophical Essays, 30n Religion and Science, 272, 273n, 292, 317 Santayana, influence on, 269 Santayana on, xlix, 148, 261 Santayana’s review(s) of, 28, 271, 272, 291, 313, 316 and social activism, lvi mentioned, xlii, xlvii, lix, lxii, 24, 236
Index Russell, George William (pseud. Æ) Collected Poems by A.E., 50n identified, 50n letter(s) to, 50 Santayana quotes, 50–51 “The Virgin Mother,” 50–51 Russell, John Francis Stanley identified, 254n and James Darnley, xxi, 254, 255, 260, 271, 291, 296, 306 Labour Government, memeber of, 255 Mabel Edith Scott, his first wife, 271n Marion “Mollie” Cumbermould, his second wife, 271n his marriage, Santayana on, 255 Mary Annette Beauchamp, his third wife, lxv, 36n, 271, 306 Mary Morris, has affair with, 271n Santayana, relationship with, li–liii Santayana on, xlix, li–liii Sargeaunt, calls Santayana, lii mentioned, xlvii, lxii, 46n Russell, Mabel Edith Scott ( John Russell’s first wife), 271n Russell, Marion “Mollie” Cumbermould ( John Russell’s second wife), 271n Russell, Mary Annette Beauchamp Elizabeth and Her German Garden, 36, 253, 290, 295–96 identified, 36n The Jasmine Farm, 82, 83n, 167 and The Last Puritan, xxi, 35, 36n, 231, 254, 255, 260, 271, 291, 296, 306 letter(s) to, 35, 82 Love, 251, 252n her marriage, lxv her marriage, Santayana on, 255 Vera, 36n her writing, compared with Santayana’s, 36 her writing, Santayana on, 251 mentioned, xxiii, lii, 73, 167, 251 “Russell’s Philosophical Essays” (Santayana), 28, 30n Russia, Santayana on, lxv–lxvi, 363, 375 Rutter, Frank (unidentified), and The Last Puritan, 366
Sabbatucci, Luigi (Santayana’s doctor) identified, 262n
591
Santayana on, 262–63 mentioned, xxii, lviii, 261, 272, 424, 424n Sacco and Venzetti case, lvi Saint Felix School, 280, 280n Sanborn, Thomas Parker identified, 307n and Oliver Alden, 306 Sanctuary (Faulkner), 350, 351n, 375, 379, 401 Santayana, Agustín Ruiz de (Santayana’s father) Ávila, house in, 265, 266n, 278, 316, 343, 345, 390 family history, 86, 284, 319–20, 336 identified, 86n his marriage, 247, 319, 336 Santayana named after, 367 mentioned, 86 Santayana, George ( Jorge Agustín Nicolás) address, his official, 344, 374 and his age, xxiii, 151, 263, 281, 286, 299, 309, 319, 320, 330, 332, 397, 420 America, does not return to, xxii, 70, 185–86, 190–91, 199, 247 America, his life in, 174, 312, 329, 342 on American culture, 139, 168–69 and the American Philosophical Association, 93 and architecture, liii article(s) on, 45, 85–86 Aryan Society, turns down offer of presidency, lviii on authors, 244, 350 his autobiography, 86 and autographing books, 321, 329, 343, 349, 352, 353, 357 Ávila, family in, 174 Ávila, his father’s house in, 265, 266n, 278, 316, 343, 345, 390 his background, 194 his birthday, xxv, 37, 66, 67n, 68n, 73, 74, 179n, 420, 423 and the Blue Sisters, xlix, lix on book design, 406 his books, 67, 267–68 Boston, mother’s house in, 295, 296n, 315–16, 345 and the Boston Public Latin School, xlvi, 127
592
The Letters of George Santayana
Santayana, George (continued) Boston Public Latin School poetry scandal, 193 and Boston’s Monarchist Party, 289, 290n, 292, 301 and Boston society, lix and bullfighting, 189 Campo Verano Cemetery, buried at, lv and capitalism, xii–xiii, lxiii, 21, 39, 68n, 375 his character, lxii–lxiii his childhood, 318, 336 on Christmas, 166 his citizenship, xliii, 174, 278, 279n, 325 and the Class of 1886, xix, 330–31, 343 and communism, 383 on consumers, 383 and copyright, 314 his correspondences, xli, lxiii, lxiv, 298, 368, 387–88, 430–35 his correspondences, philosophical, xlii his correspondences, as a verbal self-portrait, xlv, lxii–lxiii correspondences from mother, destroys, 433 and Cory, 413 Cory, correspondence with, lxiii Cory, his secretary, liv, 83, 289, 431–32 Cory, in will, xxiii, 236, 310–11 Cory, relationship with, xvi, liii, lv, 432 Cory visits, 24, 150, 156, 165, 170, 176, 177, 263, 286, 299, 305, 391 a cosmopolite, 153 is courteous and considerate, lxii his cousin’s family, stays with, 319 his daily routine, xviii–xix, xxiv, 150 death of, lv, 432 debate, does not like to, 70–71 and the Delta Phi Club, xix, 289 on discourse, 217 his doctor(s), xxii, lviii, 12, 261, 263, 272, 273, 277, 282, 424 Doctor of Letters, declines from Harvard, xix, 190 Doctor of Letters, receives from University of Wisconsin, 190 his dream, 322 and the Drunk’s Exercise Club, xix on economics, 38–39, 44, 74, 79, 83, 128, 132, 133, 149–40, 169, 172, 182, 305n, 314
and education, xliv his education, 13, 14n England, his time in, 194, 284, 289, 313, 330 and English critics, 144 Europe, lives in, xli, 284 family history, 86, 247–48, 248, 284, 319–20, 336, 343, 358, 360, 366–67 and family portraits, 384 and Fascism, 43 his Faustlike nature, 33 feminists on, l finances Brown Shipley and Company, xviii, 9–10, 81, 89, 140, 170, 172, 182, 188, 196, 208, 243, 245, 257, 265, 278, 279, 294, 301, 316, 334, 366, 391, 397, 399, 413, 416 his budget, 101 charities, lvii, 10 his concerns over, 53–54 and Cory, 81n, 310–11 Cory’s allowance, xi, xiv, xv, xviii, xx, xxii, liv, 8, 10, 11, 12, 27, 35, 52–53, 57, 71, 76, 79–80, 84, 99, 111, 114–15, 126, 132, 150, 156, 172, 176, 181, 196, 217, 219, 261, 263, 266, 301, 305–6, 327, 339, 342, 391, 396, 403, 413, 422 his deed of trust, 278, 279, 294, 316 Gardiner, money from, 278 for Harvard, 256 his Harvard fellowship, 102, 125, 334 Harvard Fund Council, 13 hotel expenses, xv, 58, 206, 371, 372 his income, xii, xiii, xiv, xv, 9, 24, 38, 41, 58, 59, 74, 79, 79–80, 81, 124, 169, 293, 305, 332, 366 income tax, 278, 292–93, 325, 365–66, 366, 367 and the Italian lira, xv, 389, 390, 391, 397, 403 letter of credit, 9, 53, 74, 101, 169–70, 172, 177, 181, 254, 257, 314, 337, 348, 374 Manuela, sends money to, xxv, 390, 415 Mercedes, sends money to, xxv, 89, 390, 397–98, 398–99, 413–14 Miller, sends money to, xi, 7, 10, 99,
Index 101, 104 profits from book sales, and after his death, 315 his property, 39 publishers’ payments, 133, 140, 287, 413 his records, 278, 292, 314 his rent, 58, 128 royalities, xviii, xxi, xxiii, liv, 14, 118, 132, 200, 201, 201n, 211–12, 220, 231, 237, 239–40, 243, 250, 253, 265, 278, 290, 294, 298, 301, 302, 305, 310, 314, 315, 322, 325, 328, 332, 333, 337–38, 365, 367, 372, 375, 389, 395, 397, 398, 399, 404, 414, 415, 417–18 and the sanctions on Italy, xxii, 230, 244, 254, 257, 267n, 304n Santayana on, 79–80, 104, 133 and the Sastre family, xxii, xxv, 138, 267 Robert Sturgis, legacy from, 79, 278, 292 taxes on legacies, 334 Tindall’s payment, 119 and N. Toy, 358 yearly account, xii, xv, xviii, 9, 67, 71, 73, 74, 79, 84, 156, 169, 172, 263, 265, 283, 292 mentioned, liii, 7, 138, 348, 385 and forms of address, xlvi–xlvii, lxiv on French authors, 261 and French books, 198 friends American, 322 Americans, socially prominent, lxi–lxii the Ames’s, 337, 348 Army chaplain, 222–23 Barlow, xix, xxiii, 247, 312, 332 Beal, xxiii Bell, xix Cory, 255 H. Cushing, 258 B. Cutting, 395 death of, 319 Europeans, aristocratic, lxi–lxii Harvard classmates, xlvi, lix the Harvard poets, 306–7 Kallen, 269 Loeser, lix
593
R. Lowell, xlvii Morgan, xix older, 387 Onderdonk, 294 Phelps, 297 E. Potter, l, 353 J. Russell, 255 M. Russell, xxiii Thoron, xix, 186 N. Toy, l Westenholz, 255 M. Winslow, l mentioned, 387 on friendship, 247, 397 on the German language, 255, 260 in Germany, 271 Germany, graduate student in, xli, xlv on good people, 307 on government, 354, 375 and the Great Depression, xiii, 37, 38, 41, 51, 53, 69, 69n, 102, 133 and the Greek language, 48, 51, 152 and Harvard, li, 224, 302, 359, 384, 393, 424–25 Harvard, and the Hasty Pudding Club, xlvi Harvard, class portrait, 424, 425n Harvard, does not return to, 185 Harvard, his last lecture at, 285, 285n Harvard, life at, 197 Harvard, Philosophical Club at, xlvi Harvard, professor at, xxiii, xli, lx–lxi, 86, 191, 329 Harvard, retirement from, lix, lx, lxi and Harvard classmates, xlvi, lix, 256 Harvard class reunion, 186 Harvard Lampoon, draws cartoons for, xlvi his health, xi, xxii, 6, 12, 15, 60, 82, 84, 91, 93, 99, 115, 117, 150, 262, 263, 265, 272, 273, 277–78, 282, 285, 287, 299, 309, 330, 353, 424 on history, 86 honored, on being, 262 Hook on, 116 his humor, xlvii–xlix on humor, 250 on hypnotism, 400 on industrialism, xii–xiii and intellectual retreats, 148 and irony, xlviii–xlix
594
The Letters of George Santayana
Santayana, George (continued) his Italian, 4 Italy, on living in, xxii, xli, lxi, 257, 267 H. James, compared to, xlix Josephine, inheritance from, 69 his language is formal, xlvii–xlix languages, knows several, xli, lxiii, 45, 46n, 60, 157, 438, 440 and laughter, xlix League of Nations, dislikes, 251 and lectures, 43, 315 his letters to W. James, 33, 141 on life, 297, 354 on his life, 178, 240, 271, 330, 337 his life, compares with Barlow’s, 312 and literary criticism, xliv his living arrangments, xvi, 59–60, 71, 73, 114, 115, 118, 131–32, 132, 294, 372 on love, 362–63 Madrid, born in, 86, 343 on mail services, 145, 208, 344, 349 his manuscripts, 295, 334 and the Mark Twain Medal, 310, 420 and marriage, l his master’s gown, 360, 361n his meals, xviii–xix, xxiii, xxiv, 272, 340, 346, 348, 403–4 on the modern world, 330–31 and his mother, 247, 248 his name, 126, 366, 366–67 on Nazism, xvii–xvii, 116, 424 on newspapers, 398 on novels, 191, 298 on old age, 177–78, 185, 199, 226–27 on older generation, 197, 312 and opera, xvii, 6, 96–97, 156, 172 his parents, 336 his passport, 112 people on, 341 his personality, xlv, lxii–lxiii philosophy and religion and absolute values, 188 and aesthetics, xliv on the American humanists, 41 on animal faith, 62, 109, 297, 327 and anti-Semitism, lvii–lviii, lxiii and archetypes, 163 and art, 188 and beauty, 50, 189, 357 on belief, 324, 326, 327
on British empiricism and essence, 92–93 on Catholicism, 63, 67, 70, 92, 116, 122–23, 174, 323–24 on Christianity, 50, 147–48, 202, 243, 401 and the Church, lxv on the comic universe, 408 and conceptual dogmatism, 109 and conscious automata, 351 on consciousness, xliv, 110, 113, 117, 167, 170, 238–39, 264, 317, 326 and the contemplative life, 188 and datum, 62, 167, 168, 317 on death, 25, 178 on elements, 113 on English philosophy, 88 on English realism, 88 on essence(s), xlii, xliii, 54–55, 92–93, 95, 97, 100, 101, 113, 114, 136, 163, 164, 167, 173, 256, 264, 298, 317, 324, 326, 327, 349, 370, 385, 419 and ethics, xliv on experience, 25, 96, 97, 351, 353, 354 on faith, 297 on feeling, 100, 264 and flux, 317 on form, 117 and French Comtist positivism, 26 on heaven, 178 and humanism, 370 and human nature, 155 and human society, 171 and idealism, 107, 317 on ideas, xlii, 111 and images, 54–55, 56, 195, 350–51 on immanence, 50 immediate experience, 324 on immortality, 178 and individualism, xliii, 171 on individuality, 139 on in potentia, 324 and intellect, 316, 323, 324, 326 on intent, 316, 324, 326, 327 and intuition, xlii, 101, 168, 264, 316, 324, 326, 419 on inward religion, 354–55 on Islam, 116–17 and Judaism, lvii–lviii, lxiii
Index on life of reason, xlii, 354–55, 378 on man’s condition, 52 on materialism, xliii–xliv, 116 on matter, xlii, 300 on Maya, 300 and meaning, 269 on memory, 261, 264 and messianism, 26 on mind, 195 on moral freedom, 162, 303 and morality, 107 and moral relativism, xlv, lxiv and morals, 221 mysticism, 26 on mystics, 290 on natural faith, 327 and naturalism, xliii–xliv, 62, 174, 317, 370 is a naturalist, 107, 174 and nature, xliv, 170–71 and New Testament criticism, 148 on objects of belief, 324 on pain, 110 on pantheism, 43–44 and papal supremacy and church autonomy, 213 and perception, 168, 264, 316 and percepts, 76 and personal immortality, xliv and phenomena, 155 philosopher, considers himself, lx–lxi philosopher and philosophy professor, difference between, lxi, lxv on philosophers, 144, 120 philosophy, and the teaching of, lx–lxi on philosophy, 27, 57 on his philosophy, 21, 34, 55–56, 144, 326 his philosophy, changes in, 349, 354 philosophy and relativity, and the conflict between, xliii and pictorial experience, 83–84 and pictorial realism, 370 and Platonic idealism, xlii on Platonism, 50 and the psyche, xli and psychological theory, 422 and psychologism, 370
595
and Puritanism, xvii and relativism, xliv and religion, xliii–xliv, 76, 105, 107, 139, 147, 155, 170, 202, 216 on religious faith, 297 on religious institutions, 354 on scepticism, 57, 62, 75, 76 on scholasticism, 123 on sedentarism, 75 on the self, xlii and sensation, 324 on sense, 323, 326, 327 and sense-data, 229, 236, 327, 419 and sentient elements, 109 on space and time, 100, 101 on Spinoza’s philosophy, 120 and spirit, xliii, xliv, 220, 221, 238–39, 264, 281, 326, 370 spirit and body, the dichotomy of, xliii, xliv spiritual freedom, 162, 302 and the spiritual life, 213, 354–55 and the symbolic, 59 and thought, 264 and truth, 164, 269–70, 391, 396 and value, xiii and the virtual, 59 mentioned, 207 photograph(s) of, xlix, lxiv, 46, 211, 258, 284, 286, 299, 342–43, 349, 359, 402 on poetry, 155, 182, 193, 296 on poets, 153, 163, 290, 297 and politics, xvii, lvii, 43, 116–17, 132, 181, 190, 251, 252–53 on his popularity, 272, 273 portrait of, 258, 342, 349, 352–53, 357, 392, 393, 394, 402 press-cutting agencies, does not subscribe to, 85, 250, 298 on professors, lx–lxi, 27 his profile, 129 publications “The Aeneid,” 29n, 141, 193 “An Æsthetic Soviet,” 158, 159n, 329, 409, 409n “Alternatives to Liberalism,” 98, 98n, 105, 105n, 106, 111, 117, 118, 122, 133 baccalaureate address, 142 “Bertrand Russell’s Searchlight,” 272, 273n, 273, 292, 314, 317
596
The Letters of George Santayana
Santayana (continued) publications (continued) “Bishop Berkeley,” 229, 229n, 230, 235, 236, 240, 277, 311–12, 325, 329, 352, 353, 355, 357, 365, 402, 410, 417 “Boston Latin School 1635–1935,” 167 “Breve historia de mis opiniones” (trans. by Marichalar), 90, 90n “A Brief History of My Opinions,” 89, 194, 195n, 285, 285n, 349, 357, 358, 361, 368 “Brief History of Myself,” 291, 292n Character and Opinion in the United States, 90, 94, 94n, 162, 162n, 329 “The Class of 1882,” 29, 31n, 141, 193 his collected works, does not wish to compile, 321, 328 “The Critical Writings of George Santayana” (Leavis), 272, 276 “The Critique of Pragmatism,” 28, 30n “Croce’s Aesthetics,” 141, 142, 142n “Dark Lady of the Sonnets,” 46, 46n Der letzte Puritaner. Die Geschichte eines tragischen Lebens (trans. Laporte and Grote), xxv, 233, 234n, 411, 422, 424, 425 “Dewey’s Naturalistic Metaphysics,” 158, 159n, 408 Dialogues in Limbo, 45, 48, 61, 78, 127, 297, 343, 351, 394n “The Dioscuri: Two Interludes,” 29, 31n Dominations and Powers, xi, xvii, xix, 96, 99, 102, 103, 106, 108, 112, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123, 132, 133, 140, 140n, 144, 151, 152, 154, 156, 157n, 165, 175, 205, 301–2, 303n, 314, 329, 388, 396, 411 “Earliest Verses of George Santayana” (poetry manuscript), 409–10, 410n Egotism in German Philosophy, 127, 257, 329, 349, 352, 407, 408n “The Elderly Mind of Early America” (unpublished), 396
“The Ethical Doctrine of Spinoza,” 3, 3n “A Few Remarks,” 158, 159n, 329, 388 “The Flight of Helen: A Fragment,” 29, 31n “Fragment from Catullus,” 142 The Genteel Tradition at Bay, 48, 65, 106, 107, 122 “Glimpses of Old Boston,” 142 “Hamlet,” 30, 31n, 359 The Hermit of Carmel, 329 “Hypostatic Ethics,” 30n The Idea of Christ in the Gospels, 136, 137n, 151 images for, 349, 357, 359–60, 392, 393–94, 402, 424–25 “The Indomitable Individual,” 329, 388, 388n, 411 Interpretations of Poetry and Religion, 359, 396n “Introduction to Hamlet,” 30, 31n W. James, review of, 141 “King’s College Chapel,” 360, 361n The Last Puritan, xii, xiii, xvii, xviii, xix, xx, xxi, xxiii, xxv, xli, l, lxiv, 4–5, 5n, 14–15, 18, 29, 32, 34, 35, 35–36, 37, 39, 44, 46, 53, 57, 62, 66, 69, 72, 73, 81, 87, 87n, 88, 90, 91, 96, 98, 102, 103, 103n, 114, 118, 119, 121, 123, 128, 132, 133–34, 135, 136, 138, 144, 145, 149, 150, 151, 152, 156–57, 157–58, 160, 160–61, 161, 164, 165, 166, 170, 172–73, 174, 175, 176, 177, 183, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 190, 191, 192, 194, 196, 197, 198, 199, 199n, 200, 202, 202–3, 203, 203n, 204, 205, 205–6, 206, 208, 211–12, 215, 217, 218, 219, 220, 222–23, 224, 226, 228, 229, 230, 231, 232, 234, 237—38, 239–40, 241, 242, 243, 244, 245–46, 246, 248–49, 250, 252, 253, 253–54, 254–55, 258, 261, 263, 265, 267, 270–71, 273, 275, 278, 283, 284, 286, 288–89, 290–91, 295, 296–97, 298, 300, 301, 302, 304–5n, 308, 310, 313, 314, 316, 319, 321,
Index 321–22, 323, 325–26, 328, 329, 330n, 332–33, 333, 335, 336, 341, 343, 344, 345, 347, 349, 352, 355, 356, 359, 360, 362, 364, 365, 366, 366n, 367, 369, 372, 374–75, 392, 393, 399, 404, 411, 416, 417, 418, 422, 423, 425 Leopardi: A Biography (Origo), writes foreword for, xviii, 136, 136n, 137, 142, 239, 240 The Life of Reason, lxi, 45, 61, 106, 257, 329, 343, 354, 357, 369, 373, 393, 394, 394n, 414, 418 “Lines on Leaving the Bedford Street Schoolhouse,” 141 “Literal and Symbolic Knowledge,” 158, 159n, 351–52, 361n Little Essays (ed. Smith), 211, 211n “Locke and the Frontiers of Common Sense”, 3, 4n, 6, 14, 16, 42, 43, 66, 118n, 148, 284, 285 “A Long Way Round to Nirvana; or, Much Ado About Dying,” 70, 71n, 394n Lucifer, or the Heavenly Truce: A Theological Tragedy, 142, 281–82, 282n, 360–61, 406, 407 “Many Nations in One Empire,” 133, 134n, 151 “Natural Leadership,” 388, 411, 411n Obiter Scripta (eds. Buchler and Schwartz), xvii, 4n, 127–28, 142–43, 158, 160, 179, 184, 201–2, 211, 212, 229, 232, 241, 267, 276, 290, 293, 308, 309, 323, 328, 335, 340, 369, 373, 387, 408, 408n, 411, 420 “On the Three Philosophical Poets,” 343–44, 344n, 349, 353, 355, 357 “On the Unity of My Earlier and Later Philosophy,” 393, 394n, 402 “Overheard in Seville,” 158, 159n “Penitent Art,” 409, 409n Persons and Places, xlv, lii, 314, 315n, 321, 360, 384 “Philosophers at Court, from Act IV,” 30, 31n “Philosophical Heresy,” 352 The Philosophy of Santayana: Selections from the Works of George Santayana
597
(ed. Edman), 78, 79, 79n, 90, 141, 142, 211, 219, 228, 229, 232, 241, 276, 412, 426 Platonism and the Spiritual Life, 48, 349, 352, 393, 394n Poems, xlviii, 3, 3n, 49, 187, 192, 329 prefaces for, 328, 340, 344, 349, 356, 357, 359, 362, 3635 370, 394, 402, 407, 417 “President Garfield,” 29, 141, 193 “The Prestige of the Infinite,” 394n “Proust on Essences,” 158, 159n, 361 The Realm of Essence, xlii, 114, 329, 330n, 361, 408 The Realm of Matter, xlii, liv, 50, 50n, 61, 125, 311, 329, 330n, 361 The Realm of Spirit, xix, xlii, xliv, 37, 83, 205, 206, 209, 213, 214n, 215, 226–27, 236, 238–39, 240, 240n, 261, 285–86, 329, 330n, 423 The Realm of Truth, xix, xlii, 37, 205, 209, 215, 239, 261, 270, 285, 325, 329, 330n, 332, 371, 380, 382, 384–85, 388, 389n, 391–92, 396 Realms of Being, xlii, 46, 197, 351, 388, 397 Reason in Common Sense, 394n Reason in Science, 402 Reason in Society, 394n and reprints, 409 reviews of, 47 “The Revolt of the Nations” (unpublished), 396, 401 “Russell’s Philosophical Essays,” 28, 30n Santayana on, 9 Scepticism and Animal Faith, 49, 57, 157, 159–60, 244, 302–3, 311, 329, 330n, 343, 349, 351, 361n “The Secret of Aristotle” (Dialogues), 127, 128n Sense of Beauty, 396, 396n “Shelley or the Poetic Value of Revolutionary Prinicples,” 359, 361n Soliloquies in England, 45, 49, 78, 329, 343, 349, 352, 407, 408n “Some Meanings of the Word ‘Is’,” 158, 159n, 351, 361n,
598
The Letters of George Santayana
Santayana, George (continued) publications (continued) Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy, 14, 16, 24, 28, 47, 48, 52, 55, 64, 66, 83, 118, 148, 192, 192n, 329, 342, 370, 371n his sonnets, 46, 46n, 192 Sonnets and Other Verses, xlviii, lxiv sophomore English thesis, 142 “The Study of Essence,” 28, 30n “Tragic Philosophy,” 272, 273n, 273, 279, 280, 282, 287–88, 306, 306n, 329, 340, 359 translations of, xxv, 89, 127, 128n, 149, 197, 197n, 231, 233, 257–58, 274–75, 286, 287n, 304–5n, 335, 338, 356, 375, 380–81, 411, 422, 424, 425 “The Two Idealisms,” 158, 159n “Ultimate Religion,” xliv, 3, 4n, 6, 14, 16, 17, 24, 28, 34, 37, 42, 57–58, 63, 66, 136, 149, 158–59, 201, 241, 343, 352, 365, 394, 394n “The Unknowable,” lii, 158, 159, 159n, 284, 285, 308, 327, 343, 352, 361n unpublished manuscripts, 432 “Walt Whitman: A Dialogue,” 29, 31n “What is Æsthetics,” 158, 159n, 329 “Why I Am Not a Marxist,” 140, 140n, 169 “William James’s Psychology,” 142, 142n Winds of Doctrine: Studies in Contemporary Opinion, 28 The Works of George Santayana (Triton Edition), xxiv, xxv, 320, 321n, 328–29, 330n, 337–38, 340, 340n, 342, 349, 351–52, 353, 354, 355, 356–57, 358, 359–61, 362, 364–65, 366n, 370, 384, 392, 393–94, 396, 402, 404, 405–6, 406–8, 410, 414, 417, 422, 424–25, 426 mentioned, 146, 152, 249 on publishing, 182, 183, 184, 403 pupil(s) of, lviii, lx, 102, 288, 359 on quotations, 244, 370 on race, lviii
reads Alain, xx, 215, 225 Bainville, 27 Bell, 196–97 Bergson, 57, 62, 71, 130, 131, 133 Bhagavad Gita, xx, 207, 207n Bliss, 170 Bodkin, 155, 163 Boring, 41 S. Butler, 260–61 Calvacanti, xli Calverton, 139, 152, 400 Coates, 6 Cory, 10–11, 195 Couchoud, 66 Dante, xli De Casseres, 300 Dunn, 331 Eastman, 188, 408 Edman, 425, 426 Eliot, 92 Erman, 174 Faulkner, 350, 375 Freedman, 182 German, 309 Guyot, 27 Heidegger, xviii, 55, 136, 137, 146, 149, 302 Hook, 21, 116, 270 Housman, 420 Husserl, 137 A. Huxley, xx, 206 Italian newspapers, xxii, 301, 304n, 375 Italian Platonizing poets, xli Kallen, 270, 382 Lamont, 178 Lao Tzu, 400 Lewis, 153 Loisy, 26, 71 Luce, 235, 236 Mann, 309 Maritain, 165, 207 Marquand, 416, 418 Marx, 21 Mather, 180 Michelangelo, xli Miller, 84 Pound, 171 Powys, 378 Richards, 6
Index B. Russell, 148 M. Russell, 251 Saint John of the Cross, xx, 207, 220, 227, 251 Shakespeare, 16 Shaw, 4 Smith, 16, 18, 19 Spanish friends, 63 Spender, 220 Sternberger, 137 Stoll, 23 Strong, 7, 110, 111, 226, 419, 421–22 Thompson, 95–96 Tolstoy, 186 Ward, 164 Whitehead, 17 Wolfson, 120 Yeats, 212–13 and relationships, xlix, 228–29 his reputation, xlix, 405 is a Roman Catholic, xliii Rosamond Sturgis, relationship with, xxiii, liii Royal Society of Literature, receives medal from, 420 J. Russell, relationship with, li–liii and the Sacco and Venzetti case, lvi Santillana on, 311 the Sastre family and his will, 278, 279 is a sceptic, 326 on sceptics, 324 his sexuality, l–lii, lxiv, lxv his signature, 439 and socialism, lxiii, lxvi and the solitude life, lix and Spain, 68n, 174 Spain, born in, xli Strong, his correspondence with, lxiii Strong, relationship with, lv, lxv, 117–18, 123, 421–22 Strong, on staying with, xvi, 124 Strong visits, 15, 18, 48, 54, 84, 99, 136 on students, 323 G. Sturgis, correspondence with, 248 G. Sturgis, relationship with, 265 G. Sturgis visits, 13 Robert Sturgis (nephew), relationship with, liii and the Sturgis family, 358 Susan, his godmother, 367 Susan, relationship with, l, 336
599
and tea time, 371, 372 Three Centuries of Harvard 1636–1936, N. Toy sends copy of, 377 on time and dates, 166 Tory, describes himself as, lvii, lxv on translations, 274–75, 323 travel plans Aragno (Italy), 23 Cannes (France), 263 Cortina d’Ampezzo (Italy), xvi, xix, 10, 18, 27, 32, 35, 36, 54, 74, 80, 84, 124, 130, 131, 138, 151, 177, 188, 190, 194, 195, 196, 197, 199, 215, 282, 286, 397 Dieppe (France), 151 Egypt, 413 England, 73 Fiesole (Italy), xvi, 101, 103, 104, 108, 115, 117, 119, 131, 138 Fiuggi (Italy), 74, 181, 282 Florence, xvi, 112 Glion-sur-Montreux (Switzerland), xxiv, 363 The Hague, lix, 37, 148 Monaco, 73 Paris, xxiii–xxiv, 74, 150–51, 177, 263, 282, 286, 299, 305, 322, 327, 332, 334, 337, 338, 339, 341, 345, 346, 348, 358, 375 Rapallo (Italy), 118 Riviera, 24, 36, 54, 67, 74, 96, 263 Rome, xxiv, 48, 49, 51, 54, 55, 57, 74, 124, 131, 133, 136, 138, 144, 197, 227, 234, 239, 244, 245, 338, 360, 374, 377, 380, 381, 382, 383, 385, Vallombrosa (Italy), 114 Venice, xviii, xix, 37, 45, 47, 54, 74, 114, 124, 128, 130, 133, 134, 138, 177, 195, 199, 215, 226, 234 Versailles, 177 view of, indifferent to others’, lix–lx visits Strong, 101–2, 104, 106, 108, 117, 122, 124, 134, 299, 339–40, 342, 348 his walks, 215 and war, lv–lvi, 181, 190, 249, 252, 263, 322, 338 his will, decisions on, xxiii, 265–66, 272, 278–79, 283, 292, 294–95, 315, 334, 345, 366, 367, 394–95, 398, 399, 413
600
The Letters of George Santayana
Santayana, George (continued) and women, xlviii, l on World War I, lv, 181, 190, 194, 284, 330 and World War II, xix, xxii, xxiv, lvi his writing bibliography of, 28, 127, 276 Cory on, 72 not finished, 320–21 language used, xiii, lxiv his literary method, xliv mechanics of, 430–31, 437–38 Obiter Scripta, bibliography compiled for, 127, 141 M. Russell, compared with, 36, 36n Santayana on, 37, 45, 48, 73, 74, 127–28, 159, 211, 261, 281–82, 286, 296, 302, 356–57, 369–70, 396 his spelling, 214, 214n, 216, 429, 431, 437 wishes to move forward in, 321 on younger generation, 197, 312, 330, 362 his youth, 359 on youth, 179, 248, 347 and the Zeta Psi Club, 90 Santayana, Josefina Borrás y Carbonell [Sturgis] de (Santayana’s mother) Batang (island in Philippines), lived in, 249, 249n Boston, house in, 295, 296n, 315, 345 and her brother-in-law’s family, 319 her children, 319, 336 family history, 86, 284, 319–20, 336 and her first husband, 199n, 210n, 319 identified, 86n and The Last Puritan, 249 her letters, Santayana destroys, 433 her portrait, 384 Santayana on, 247, 249 her second marriage, 247, 319, 336 and Spanish ways and ideas, 247 Robert Sturgis (Santayana’s father’s brother), money from, 319 and the Sturgis family, 247 Santayana, María Josefa (Santayana’s aunt), 336, 337n Santayana, Nicolás Ruiz de (Santayana’s uncle)
identified, 367n Santayana’s godfather, 367 Santayana, Santiago (Santayana’s uncle), 336, 337n “Santayana at Cambridge” (Münsterberg), lxiv “Santayana’s Novel” (Dewey), 369, 371n “Santayana’s Philosophy” (Munitz), 369–70, 371n Santayana: The Later Years (Cory), xlvii, lxiv, lxv, 440, 441n Santayana y Zabalgoitia, Manuela Ruiz de her allowance, 74, 390–91, 415 death of, xxv, 415–16 her doctor, xxv, 390–91, 398, 415–16 her finances, 390–91 her health, 87, 380, 386, 390–91 her hospital bills, 415 identified, 75n new address, 87, 337 Santayana sends money, xxv, 390, 415 mentioned, 82, 390, 414 Santiago, Saint, 367 Santillana, Giorgio de identified, 311n visits Santayana, 311 Sartre, Jean-Paul, and social activism, lvi Sastre, Adelaida Hernández de (wife of Rafael) identified, 69n mentioned, 69n, 267n Sastre, Susan “Susana” Parkman Sturgis de (Santayana’s half sister) Celedonio, marriage to, 336, 343, 367 and the convent, 248 cousin’s family, stays with, 318 death of, l, 45, 174, 294 and dialectical materialism, 248 and John Putnam, 318, 320n, 336 Philippines, born in, 45 and religion, 248, 367 Santayana, named him, 366–67 Santayana, relationship with, l, 336 Santayana on, 248 Santayana’s godmother, 367 and society, 318 her stepsons, 266n mentioned, xlvi, lix, 10, 14n, 86, 210n, 249, 319, 336, 358, 360, 367, 376, 380, 433, 438
Index Sastre, Teresa Fernández de Soto de (wife of Luis) death of, xi, 13 mentioned, 14n Sastre family, xxii, xxv, 138, 266n Sastre González, José “Pepe” (son of Celedonio) Ávila, and Santayana’s father’s house in, 345, 346n his daughter(s), 267n, 279 identified, 69n letter(s) to, 303 his sons, 373 mentioned, 69n Sastre González, Luis (son of Celedonio) Ávila, and Santayana’s father’s house in, 345, 346n his children, xi death of wife, xi, 13 identified, 14n mentioned, 69n, 373 Sastre González, Rafael (son of Celedonio) Ávila, and Santayana’s father’s house in, 345, 346n identified, 69n letter(s) to, 68, 266 Santayana, correspondence with, 373, 376, 380, 386, 390, 414 Sastre Martín, Eduardo (son of José), 304n, 374n Sastre Martín, Roberto, 374n Sastre Serrano, Celedonio identified, 86n his sons, 266n Susan, his marriage to, 336, 367 mentioned, 14, 86, 294, 360, 438 Saturday Review of Literature ( journal) “Alternatives to Liberalism,” 98, 98n, 105, 106 The Genteel Tradition at Bay, 122 The Last Puritan, Canby’s review of, 291, 292n Santayana on, 121, 228 and Santayana’s articles, 228 and Santayana’s photograph, 211, 299 mentioned, lv, 65n Savage, Philip Henry identified, 307n and Oliver Alden, 306 A Sceptical Examination of Contemporary British Philosophy (Coates), 6, 7n, 11
601
Scepticism, Santayana on, 57, 62, 75, 76 Scepticism and Animal Faith (Santayana) Santillana on, 311 mentioned, 49, 57, 157, 159–60, 244, 302–3, 329, 330n, 343, 349, 351, 361n Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von identified, 265n mentioned, 264 Scholasticism, Santayana on, 123 Scholastics, 316, 317n Schopenhauer, Arthur, l Schuhl, Pierre-Maxime, Essai sur la formation de la pensée grecque, 213, 214n Schwartz, Benjamin P. identified, 128n and “The Indomitable Individual,” 411 letter(s) to, 127, 141, 158, 179, 184, 290, 323, 387, 411 and “Natural Leadership,” 411, 411n Obiter Scripta, Obiter Scripta, xvii, 127–28, 128n, 158, 160, 184, 201, 211, 212, 276, 290, 293, 323, 328, 387, 411 Obiter Scripta, bibliography for, 127, 141, 276 Santayana on, 329, 387 and Santayana’s letters, 387–88 and “Ultimate Religion,” 201–2 Science, and religion, 148 Science and the Modern World (Whitehead), 11n Scribner, Charles, Jr. identified, 15n and The Last Puritan, 302 letter(s) to, 14 president of Charles Scribner’s Sons, 15n Scrutiny ( journal), 98, 106, 106n, 118, 250n, 272, 273n, 273, 276, 280, 282, 287–88, 306, 329 Sea Level (Bliss), 170, 171n Sedentarism, Santayana on, 75 Sein und Zeit (Heidegger), xviii, 55n, 136, 146 Selected Essays (Eliot), 272, 273n Self, the, Santayana on, xlii Sellars, Roy Wood Essays in Critical Realism, 15, 16n identified, 16n The Philosophy of Physical Realism, 15, 16n, 17, 23 review of, 23
602
The Letters of George Santayana
Sellars, Roy Wood (continued) his writing, Santayana on, 15–16 mentioned, 17, 76 Seminary in Metaphysics (Whitehead), 109, 109n Seneca, Lucius Annaeus identified, 20n mentioned, 20 Sensation, Santayana on, 324 Sense, Santayana on, 323, 326, 327 Sense-data, Santayana on, 229, 236, 327, 419 Sense of Beauty (Santayana), 396, 396n Septimana Spinozana (ed. Nijhoff) Santayana has copies sent, 17 mentioned, 4, 4n, 6, 12, 14, 16, 17, 24, 28, 34, 37, 42, 55, 57–58, 63, 149, 201 Sept leçons sur l’être et les premiers principes de la raison spéculative (Maritain), 165, 165n The Seven Hills of Rome, 166, 167n Severino (Strong’s gardener), 104 Shakespeare, William Eliot on, 20 his philosophy, Santayana on, 20 Santayana on, xii, 16, 19–20 Smith on, xii, 16, 18 mentioned, 24 Shaw, George Bernard The Adventures of the Black Girl in Her Search for God, 4, 6 identified, 5n mentioned, 24 Shaw, Robert Gould, 210n Shaw, Sarah Sturgis (Mrs. Francis George Shaw), 199, 210n Shelby, C. L. (unidentified) and The Last Puritan, 308 letter(s) to, 308 Obiter Scripta, Santayana autographs, 308 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 361 “Shelley or the Poetic Value of Revolutionary Prinicples” (Santayana), 359, 361n A Shropshire Lad (Housman), 420, 420n Silcox, Lucy, 280 The Silver World: An Essay on the Ultimate Problems of Philosophy ( Jahn), 244, 244n Simple Insanities: Reflection in Rime
(Freedman), 182 Simpson, Wallis Warfield identified, 424n mentioned, xxv, 424 Smith, Alys Pearsall (Mrs. Bertrand Russell) identified, 24n mentioned, 17n Smith, Logan Pearsall identified, 17n on The Last Puritan, 231, 254 The Last Puritan review, sends Santayana, 254, 255 letter(s) to, 16, 19 Little Essays, 211, 211n Obiter Scripta, Santayana sends, 268 On Reading Shakespeare, 16, 17n, 18, 19–20 “On Re-Reading Pater,” 392, 392n Reperusals and Re-collections, 392, 392n and Shakespeare, xii his sisters, 17n mentioned, 24 Smith, Nelson (unidentified) Santayana, writing thesis on, 41 mentioned, 17, 18n, 92 Socialism, Santayana on, lxiii, lxvi Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (SAAP), 432 Socrates and Dialogues in Limbo (Santayana), 297 and Plato’s dialogue, lix Ross on, 12n mentioned, 62, 316 Soliloquies in England (Santayana), 45, 49, 78, 329, 343, 349, 352, 407, 408n Solomon, king of Israel, lvii, 364 “Some Meanings of the Word ‘Is’” (Santayana), 158, 351, 360, 361 Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy (Santayana), 14, 16, 24, 28, 47, 48, 52, 55, 64, 66, 83, 118, 118n, 148, 192, 192n, 329, 343, 365 The Song of Solomon (Bible), 227, 227n Sonnets and Other Verses (Santayana), xlviii, lxiv Soviets, Santayana on, 116 Space, and essence, 100, 101 Spain Anarchist-Syndicalist revolts, 68n, 69n and civil war, xxii, xxv, 440
Index and fascism, lxiii government in, 376, 401 the insurgents, 376, 376n and Miguel Primo de Rivera, 375 political events in, Santayana on, xxii, 68n, 304n, 305n, 358, 360, 361n, 363, 375, 376, 380–81, 386, 390, 396, 397, 398, 401–2, 404, 424 Santayana on, xlviii, 174, 284, 364, 401–2 Santayana’s time in, 313, 336 Spaniards and bullfighting, 189 young people in, 401–2 Spencer, Herbert First Principles, 221, 221n identified, 221n a materialist, 264 his philosophy, Santayana on, 263–64 Principles of Psychology, 221, 221n “The Unknowable,” Santayana’s article on, lii, 327 Spender, Stephen his British liberalism, 220 The Destructive Element: A Study of Modern Writers and Beliefs, 213, 214n, 220 identified, 214n his writing, Santayana on, 220 Spengler, Oswald The Decline of the West, 31n identified, 31n Spinoza, Baruch birth of, 16, 37 celebration of, 28 excommunicated, lxi identified, 3n his naturalism, 370 and pantheism, 43n his philosophy, Santayana on, lviii, lxi, 119–20 Santayana’s address on, 3, 16, 28, 394 statue of, 393 mentioned, 130, 147 Spirit and body, the dichotomy of, xliii, xliv Santayana on, 220, 221, 238–39, 264, 281, 326, 370 The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (Royce), 183n Spiritual freedom, Santayana on, 162, 303 Spiritual life, Santayana on, 213, 354–55 “Spiritual Life: Santayana’s Approach to Essence” (Le Boutillier), 426, 426n
603
Squires (unidentified), 47, 47n Stein, William Bysshe, xliv Sternberger, Dolf Der Verstandege tod; eine Untersuchung zu Martin Heideggers existenzial-Ontologie, 137, 137n identified, 137n Stickney, Joseph Trumbull identified, 307n and Oliver Alden, 306 Stillman Infirmary (Harvard), 287, 289n Stoll, Elmer Edgar Art and Artifice in Shakespeare, 23–24 identified, 19n his writing, Santayana on, 23–24 mentioned, 18 The Stones of Venice (Ruskin), 318, 320n Strong, Charles Augustus his article(s), sends Santayana, 6 books, Santayana sends, 23 Cory and Cory, lxv, 391 Cory, and his writing, 217 Cory, in will, xvi, xx, 40, 80, 125, 236, 265–66, 295 Cory, relationship with, xvi, 282 Cory’s allowance, xii, liv, 12, 40, 52, 54 Cory visits, 217, 263, 299, 305, 403 his secretary, Cory is, liv, 10, 288 visits Cory, 24 A Creed for Sceptics, 302, 303n, 339, 391, 403, 418–19, 421–22 and determinism, 109 and epistemology, 236 Essays on the Natural Origin of the Mind, 23, 24n his fellowship, xx, 81n, 236, 238 his finances, xiv, 52, 54, 58–59, 67, 101, 104, 125, 129, 138, 266, 403 his French article, 108, 111 his grandchildren, 51, 59, 60, 67, 80, 125 and the Great Depression, xiv, 40, 67 his health, 136, 143, 145, 146, 149, 205, 218, 221, 227, 251, 340, 340n, 372 identified, 5n and the Journal of Philosophy, 9 on The Last Puritan, 5, 200, 231, 321 Le Balze, xiv, xvi, liv, lxiii, 101, 103, 104, 115, 119, 129, 130, 138, 268
604
The Letters of George Santayana
Strong, Charles Augustus (continued) letter(s) to, 6, 7, 15, 23, 26, 44, 47, 51, 70, 84, 99, 106, 108, 110, 112, 130, 134, 137, 143, 144, 146, 167, 180, 204, 216, 218, 226, 236, 238, 251, 259, 280, 299, 309, 341, 372, 385, 386, 403, 418, 421 Lovejoy, disagrees with, 70, 84, 85, 110, 111 and Margaret, xlviii, 40 Margaret and George stay with, 52, 59 and Miller, 104 Obiter Scripta, Santayana sends copy, 268, 309 his Paris apartment, xlviii and perception, 85 and politics, 251 Recherches philosophiques, writes article for, 23, 24n his relationships, 40–41 Santayana his correspondence with, lxiii his philosophic system, Santayana on, 108–9, 112–13 his philosophy, Santayana on, 51, 110, 167–68, 419, 421–22 Santayana, relationship with, lv, lxv, 117–18, 123, 421–22 Santayana, sends articles to, 216, 259 Santayana on, 23, 40–41, 129–30, 136, 138, 263, 391 Santayana visits, 101–2, 104, 106, 108, 117, 122, 124, 134, 348 and Santayana’s books, 67 and Santayana’s will, 278, 279 visits Santayana, 15, 18, 48, 54, 84, 99, 136, 299, 339–40 The Works of George Santayana, Santayana sends copy, 403 his writing, Santayana on, 7, 44, 419, 421–22 and sense-data, 419 and sentience, 239 his servants, 108 travel plans, xxiv, 51, 180, 226, 251, 259, 263, 302, 305, 338, 339, 346, 363, 404 Voltaire, translates, 226 his wife, Elizabeth, xiv his will, 125, 236 his writing, 372, 390
mentioned, xvii, xlii, 35, 36, 75, 76, 114, 152, 206, 261, 264, 280, 302, 327, 358, 436 Strong, Elizabeth “Bessie” Rockefeller (Mrs. C. A. Strong), xiv, lxiii–lxiv, 25n, 58 Strong-Cuevas, Elizabeth her health, xxv, 421 identified, 25n stays with Strong, 51, 59, 60, 67, 129 and Strong’s correspondences with Santayana, lxiv mentioned, 70, 80, 125, 146 “The Study of Essence” (Santayana), 28, 30n “A Study of Locke’s Theory of Ideas” (Thompson), 95–96, 97n, 97 “A Study of Santayana with Some Remarks on Critical Realism” (Cory), 98, 98n Sturgis, Ellen Hodges (Mrs. Robert Sturgis), 10n, 210n Sturgis, George (Santayana’s mother’s first husband) death of, 319 Santayana named after, 366 mentioned, xxiii, 199n, 210n, 358, 367 Sturgis, George (Santayana’s nephew) divorced, xiv, 39n and family history, 367 and family photographs, 359 and the Great Depression, 59 identified, 10n in Italy, 199 and Josefina’s portrait, 384 The Last Puritan, Santayana sends to, 243, 246, 253, 265, 268 letter(s) to, 9, 13, 38, 53, 58, 74, 81, 87, 89, 101, 124, 138, 139, 169, 177, 181, 190, 199, 209, 243, 244, 253, 256, 257, 265, 273, 277, 292, 294, 314, 325, 333, 337, 345, 348, 357, 363, 366, 373, 377, 381, 382, 388, 390, 394, 397, 398, 413, 415, 423 and Manuela’s allowance, 390–91, 415 and Mercedes’s allowance, 381, 388–89, 390, 397–98 Obiter Scripta, Santayana sends copy of, 268 relationship to Barlow, 199, 199n, 209, 248 relationship with Rosamond, Santayana on, xiv, 38, 125
Index Santayana, correspondence with, 248 Santayana, relationship with, 265 Santayana, sends flowers to, xxv Santayana on, liii, lxv and Santayana’s finances, xii, xiv, xv, xvi, xviii, liii, 9, 13, 38, 41, 53–54, 58, 71, 73, 74, 79, 81, 84, 89, 101, 124, 133, 139–40, 169, 172, 177, 181, 243, 245, 254, 256, 257, 263, 265, 292, 305, 332, 337, 348, 366–66, 367, 374, 389, 395, 398, 413, 415, 417–18 and Santayana’s will, xxiii, 265–66, 272, 278–79, 283, 292, 294–95, 315, 334, 333, 366, 367, 394–95, 398, 399, 413 and Sastre family finances, 390 his sister, 266n travel plans, 10, 13, 191, 338 visits Santayana, 13 mentioned, xxiv, xlvi, xlviii, xlix, lvii, lviii, lx, lxvi, 210n, 379, 436, 437 Sturgis, James Victor death of, 319 identified, 320n Sturgis, Josephine Borrás (half sister of Santayana) death of, 89, 176, 266n Mercedes, legacy left to, 89 Santayana, leaves inheritance to, 69n mentioned, 10, 249, 319, 336, 433 Sturgis, Mary “Maisie” Howard identified, 320n her son, 319 mentioned, 319 Sturgis, Nathaniel Russell (1779–1856) identified, 210n mentioned, 358 Sturgis, Nathaniel Russell (Santayana’s great nephew), 10n, 38, 125, 377, 423 Sturgis, Neville (Santayana’s great nephew), 10n, 38, 125, 377, 423 Sturgis, Richard Clipston identified, 346n mentioned, 346 Sturgis, Robert Shaw (Santayana’s father’s brother) death of, 318 identified, 248n Josefina, gives money to, 319 mentioned, xxiii, 247 Sturgis, Robert Shaw (Santayana’s half brother) and his cousin’s family, 318
605
his daughter, 266n his ideal woman, 318 identified, 10n Santayana, legacy left to, 79, 278, 292 his son, 266n mentioned, liii, 10, 89, 210n, 249, 279, 319, 336 Sturgis, Robert Shaw (Santayana’s great nephew) and Harvard, liii photograph of, 364 Santayana, relationship with, liii mentioned, 10n, 38, 125, 377, 423 Sturgis, Rosamond Thomas Bennett (Mrs. George Sturgis) her brothers, 289 divorced, xiv, 39n and family photographs, 359 identified, 10n and The Last Puritan, 288 letter(s) to, 273, 287 relationship with George, Santayana on, xiv, 38 Santayana, relationship with, xxiii, liii Santayana, sends flowers to, xxv and Santayana’s health, 287 mentioned, xliv, lvii, lxv, lxvi Sturgis, Russell identified, 248n mentioned, 247 Sturgis, Russell 3d identified, 320n mentioned, 319 Sturgis, Susan Parkman (Mrs. Nathaniel Sturgis [1779–1856]), 210n Sturgis, William C., xlvi Sunday Magazine, Santayana declines to submit article, 42, 42n Sunday Times, 298 Sur ( journal), 89, 90n Sweden, Santayana on, 422, 424
Tao te ching (Lao Tzu), 400, 401n Tardieu, André identified, 217n L’Heure de la décision, 216, 217n his writing, Santayana on, 216 Tauchnitz, Christian Bernhard Bernhard Tauchnitz, founder of, 206 identified, 207n
606
The Letters of George Santayana
Tauchnitz. See Bernhard Tauchnitz (publisher) Temps (Paris), 375 A Tercentenary History of the Boston Public Latin School, 1635–1935 (Holmes), 89, 193 Teresa of Ávila, Saint identified, 394n mentioned, 393 Theseus, 64n Third Republic, 71, 71 Thomas Cook & Son, 9, 9n, 101, 177, 257, 337, 348, 366 Thompson, Samuel Martin letter(s) to, 97 his philosophy, Santayana on, 95–96, 97 “A Study of Locke’s Theory of Ideas,” 95, 97n Thoreau, Henry David identified, 300n mentioned, 300 Thoron, Ward identified, 186n The Letters of Mrs. Henry Adams, 186n Santayana’s friendship with, 186 and War and Peace, 186 mentioned, xix Thought, Santayana on, 264 The Thought and Character of William James (Perry) Santayana on, 309 Santayana sends to N. Toy, 309, 325 and N. Toy, 348 mentioned, 33, 309, 325, 326n A Thousand and One Nights, xlviii, 347 Three Centuries of Harvard 1636–1936 (Morison), 377, 377n Time, and essence, 100, 101 Time, Inc., and The Genteel Tradition at Bay, 65 Times (London), 375, 381, 386 The Times Literary Supplement The Last Puritan, review of, 250, 250n, 252, 254 Santayana, reviews of, 47, 47n Santayana’s subscription, does not renew, 253 Sellars, review of, 23 mentioned, 24n, 271, 431 Tindall, Evelyn and “Alternatives to Liberalism,” 105
and Dominations and Powers, 102, 103, 108, 112, 115, 117, 119, 121, 123, 132, 165, 175 her health, 103 identified, 5n and The Last Puritan, xii, xvii, 4, 66, 69, 87, 91, 102, 145, 149, 150, 156, 160, 164, 231 letter(s) to, 66, 69, 87, 102, 103, 105, 112, 115, 119, 121, 145, 150, 164, 175 and the Pensione White, 145, 145n Santayana, payment from, 119 travel plans, 175 mentioned, 280, 312 Titian. See Vecellio, Tiziano Tostado, Alfonso identified, 353n mentioned, 353, 360, 383 Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx (Hook), 21, 22n Toy, Crawford Howell, 33n Toy, Nancy Saunders (Mrs. Crawford Toy) her finances, xxiv, 337, 348, 358 her health, xxiv, 337 identified, 33n and The Last Puritan, 36, 36n, 255, 268 letter(s) to, 147 Obiter Scripta, Santayana sends, 268 The Philosophy of Santayana: Selections from the Works of George Santayana, Santayana sends, 412 Santayana, and anti-Semitism, lvii–lviii Santayana, bequest from, 265 Santayana, correspondence with, 387 Santayana, sketch of, 342, 352–53 Santayana on, 348 Santayana sends book(s), 148 and Santayana’s will, 279, 334, 413, 414n The Thought and Character of William James, Santayana sends, 309, 325, 348 Three Centuries of Harvard 1636–1936, sends to Santayana, 377 on The Works of George Santayana, 404 mentioned, l, lvii, lix, 33, 109 “Tragic Philosophy” (Santayana), 272, 273n, 273, 280, 282, 287–88, 306, 306n, 329, 340, 359 Treitschke, Heinrich von identified, 400n mentioned, 400
Index Triton (god), xxiv, 352, 405, 407 Triton Fountain (Rome), xxiv, 351, 352n, 357, 407 Truth and essence, 164 necessary, 270 and Platonic logic, 269 Santayana on, 391 Tuileries Gardens (Paris), xxiv, 345 Turner, Joseph Mallord William identified, 394n mentioned, 393 Tweddle, Norman, and The Last Puritan, 280–81 “The Two Idealisms” (Santayana), 158, 159n
“Ulterior Considerations” (Santayana), 140, 140n “Ultimate Religion” (Santayana), xliv, 3, 4n, 6, 14, 16, 17, 24, 28, 34, 37, 42, 58, 63, 66, 136, 149, 158–59, 201, 241, 343, 352, 365, 394, 394n Unamuno, Miguel de, 438 United Feature Syndicate, 315 University of Texas (Austin), and The Last Puritan, second half of typescript housed at, 219n University of Virginia Library, and The Last Puritain, first half of typescript housed at, 219n University of Wisconsin, 190 “The Unknowable,” (Santayana), lii, 158, 159, 159n, 284, 285n, 308, 327, 343, 352, 361n The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism (Eliot), 62, 63n, 63
Vagabond Scholar: A Venture into the Privacy of George Santayana (Lind), lxiv Valli, Achille his health, 4 identified, 5n his studies, 4 Value, xiii Van Doren, Carl Clinton Benjamin Franklin, 94n identified, 94n letter(s) to, 94 Modern American Prose, 94n
607
quotes Santayana, 94 Van Dyck, Anthony identified, 37n and The Last Puritan, 36 Van Tender (“Walt Whitman: A Dialogue”), 29, 31n Vandyke, Anthony. See Van Dyck, Anthony The Vanity of Dogmatizing (Glanvill), 123, 124n Vecellio, Tiziano identified, 216n paintings, exhibition of, 215 Vegas, Antonia Santayana (Mrs. Rafael Vegas), 336, 337n Venice Hotel Danieli, 45, 47, 49, 130, 134, 215, 234 Santayana on, 47, 130, 136, 137, 199, 236 tourists in, 236 Victoria (King Alfonso’s wife), 294 Villa Medici (Cuttings’ house), 26, 27n “The Virgin Mother” (G. Russell), 50, 50n, 50–51n Von Hagen, Victor Wolfgang identified, 149n and intellectual retreats, 148 letter(s) to, 148 and Santayana’s works, 148 Voltaire, François Marie Arouet de Candide, 227n identified, 227n Letters Concerning the English Nation, 227n Strong translates, 226
W. W. Norton Co., and The Last Puritan, 90 Wadell, Helen identified, 234n Peter Abelard, a Novel, 233, 234n Wagner (Faust), 146 Wallack, Mr. (unidentified) letter(s) to, 70 “Walt Whitman: A Dialogue” (Santayana), 29, 31n War and Peace (Tolstoy), 186, 186n Ward, Frederick Champion The Idea of a World University, 164n identified, 164n letter(s) to, 164, 173
608
The Letters of George Santayana
Ward, Frederick Champion (continued) “The Philosophy of George Santayana,” 164, 164n, 173 on Santayana’s life, 174 on Santayana’s philosophy, 173–74 his writing, Santayana on, 174 Warren, Bentley Wirt and the Garfield family, 29 identified, 31n and Oliver Alden, 259 Williams College, attends, 29 The Way of All Flesh, (Butler), 260, 260n, 261 The Weekly Times, 253 Wells, George Philip, 123n Wells, Herbert George identified, 123n mentioned, 123 Westenholz, Albert von identified, 232n The Last Puritan, Santayana has sent, 231, 254 Obiter Scripta, Santayana sends copy of, 268 “What is Æsthetics” (Santayana), 158, 159n, 329 “What is Materialism?” (Hook), 116, 117n Wheelock, John Hall and “A Brief History of my Opinions,” 368 and Egotism in German Philosophy, 349, 352 his health, 302 identified, 34n and The Last Puritan, 152, 187, 191, 200, 201n, 212n, 219, 220, 225, 228, 239–40, 246, 286, 330n, 399 letter(s) to, 34, 52, 78, 90, 191, 200, 203, 211, 219, 224, 228, 232, 237, 242, 246, 258, 267, 284, 315, 320, 328, 330, 340, 341, 342, 349, 351, 352, 355, 356, 359, 364, 365, 368, 383, 384, 393, 402, 406, 410, 412, 414, 417, 424 and the Letters of George Santayana (Cory), 431 and The Modern Library, 78 and Obiter Scripta, 212 and The Philosophy of Santayana: Selections from the Works of George Santayana (ed. Edman), 412 and Santayana’s royalities, 211, 325, 415 and Santayana’s works, 91
Some Turns of Thought, 52 and “Ultimate Religion,” 34 and The Works of George Santayana (Triton Edition), xxiv, 328, 340, 340n, 342, 349, 351–52, 353, 355, 356–57, 358, 359–60, 364–65, 384, 393–94, 402, 410, 418 mentioned, lxiv, 437, 441n Whitehead, Alfred North The Adventures of Ideas, 17, 18n Cory’s article on, 10–11 identified, 11n his philosophy, 11n his philosophy, Santayana on, 18 Science and the Modern World, 11n Seminary in Metaphysics, 109, 109n mentioned, 76 Whitman, Walt[er] identified, 300n mentioned, 300, 368 “Why I Am Not a Marxist” (Santayana), 140, 140n, 169 Wigglesworth, Thomas identified, 225n and The Last Puritan, 224 Wilcox, Dr. (unidentified), 224 Wilde, Oscar (Fingal O’Flahertie Wills) Baeza translates, 274n identified, 275n The Importance of Being Earnest, 275n The Picture of Dorian Gray, 275n Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (Goethe), 170n Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (Goethe), 170n William Jackson, Ltd. (bookseller) identified, 293n letter(s) to, 293 “William James’s Psychology” (Santayana), 142 Williams College, 29 Wills, Fingal O’Flahertie. See Wilde, Oscar Wilson, Thomas Woodrow identified, 252n mentioned, 251 Winchester College, 216, 216n Winds of Doctrine (Santayana) “A New Scholasticism,” 30n mentioned, 28 Winslow, Mary Williams, l, lxv Wolfson, Harry Austryn Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle: Problems of Aristotle’s Physics in Jewish and Arabic
Index Philosophy, 120n Harvard professor, 120 identified, 120n letter(s) to, 119 The Philosophy of Spinoza: Unfolding the Latent Processes of His Reasoning, 119 and Spinoza, 119–20 mentioned, xvii Wood, Edward Frederick Lindley, 3d Viscount Halifax, 213, 214n Woodworth, William McMichael and the Delta Phi Club, 289 identified, 290n Wordsworth, William identified, 352n “The World Is Too Much With Us,” 351, 352n The Works of George Santayana (MIT) and annotations, 440 as critical editions, 429 and destroyed or unlocated letters, 433–34 editorial policy, 429–30, 433–40 publication, history of, 430–32 and QuarkXPress, 429–30 research for, 440 and Santayana’s correspondence, 432–33, 441n and Santayana’s writing, 430–31 transcription of, 429–30, 434–36 typesetting of, 430 The Works of George Santayana (Triton Edition) and Andersen’s sketch of Santayana, 405, 407 and “Bishop Berkeley,” 410, 417 copies, Santayana sends, 403 Cory on, 404 and “Dewey’s Naturalistic Metaphysics,” 408 and Egotism in German Philosophy, 407, 408n errata, 407–8, 408n images for, 349, 357, 359–60, 392, 393–94, 402, 424–25 The Last Puritan, 417 and the Life of Reason, 414, 418 and Lucifer, 407 name of edition, xxiv, 351, 353, 405, 407 and Obiter Scripta, 408, 408n
609
prefaces for, 328, 340, 344, 349, 356, 357, 359, 362, 365, 370, 394, 502, 407, 417 proofs of, 410, 417 publication of, xxv Santayana on, 405–6, 406–7, 414, 418, 424–25 Santayana’s friends on, 406 and Santayana’s Harvard portrait, 424 Santayana’s marginal notes, 405 and Soliloquies in England, 407, 408n N. Toy on, 404 mentioned, 321n, 328–29, 330n, 337–38, 340, 340n, 342, 349, 351–52, 352, 353, 354, 355, 356–57, 358, 359–61, 362, 364–65, 366n, 370, 384, 392, 393–94, 396, 402, 422 The World and the Individual (Royce), 183 The World As I See It (Einstein), 213, 214n “The World Is Too Much With Us” (Wordsworth), 351, 352n World War I, lv, 181, 190, 194, 284, 330, 440 World War II, xix, xxii, xxiv, liii, liv, lvi, lxiii, 440 Wykeham, William of identified, 216n Winchester College, founder of, 216
Y a-t-il deux sources de la religion et de la morale (Loisy), 26, 27n Yeats, William Butler identified, 214n “Mãndookya Upanishad,” 212–13, 214n Young, Benjamin Loring identified, 315n and Santayana’s royalities, 314, 415, 417–18 mentioned, 394
Zabel, Morton Dauwen identified, 409n letter(s) to, 409 Literary Opinion in America, 409, 409n and Santayana’s works, 409, 409n Zeta Psi Club (Harvard), 90, 90n Zozaya, José identified, 269n The Last Puritan, Santayana sends, 268
Colophon
This book was designed and set in Baskerville. It was printed on 50-pound acid-free recycled paper and bound in ICG/Holliston Arrestox B 48650 cloth by Edwards Brothers Incorporated.